The White Paladin
by wearwind
Summary: Before he was taken into the sky, Shiro had his own dreams. And his own secrets to unlock. A prequel story about Shiro and the people in his life; canon compliant, with more context for his relationship with Adam, parents, and Keith.
1. Before the stars

**The White Paladin**

 _part I: before the stars_

Shiro is eight, and the cosmic void is pitch black and endless, with only distant stars glimmering oily on the firmament. His valiant white spaceship tears through the vacuum fearlessly. He's approaching the asteroid field, and a lesser pilot would stop or slow down – but Shiro speeds up at the sight. The fighter swirls and rolls around its horizontal axis, its tails flickering nimbly as he zips his way through the obstacles, until a huge asteroid with a narrow gaping chasm rises over him, and he focuses –

"Takashi! I told you not to run indoors!"

"But muuuuuuum! I'm a pilot!"

Shirogane Shizuka turns on the light. The cosmic darkness disappears to reveal a spacious living room. A collection of pillows is strategically scattered across the floor in the form of an obstacle course. Shiro groans at the light; the neatly folded paper plane is almost in the crack between the frames of the paper screen. "It's too late to be a pilot, sweetheart."

"It's never too late to be a pilot!" proclaims Shiro proudly. "I'm gonna be a pilot until I die!"

A small grimace goes through Shizuka's face, but she covers it up immediately. She walks up to her son and scoops him in her arms with ease – no small feat, as Shiro is big and sturdy for his age, but so is Shizuka. "Very well. Incoming signal, officer. You're being called in to the headquarters!"

"I don't want the headquarters!" Shiro flails in her arms, and they play-wrestle for a short moment, but there's just one way these conversations end.

"Is that insubordination, officer?"

"I have a mission to finish! An asteroid belt-"

"-can _wait._ You need to refuel and clean up the ship before the mission continues."

Shiro makes a face. "One day, I'm gonna fly a ship that never has to refuel!"

"One day, I'm gonna have myself an obedient son. But today neither of us is getting what we want." Shizuka props him up, kisses his black mop of hair, and then unceremoniously throws him over her shoulder. "Dinner, Takashi. "

"But muuuuuuum-"

"You can take the ship with you."

Shiro brightens up slightly. Shizuka crouches, and, strung along her back, Shiro reaches out for the paper plane on the floor. They both head to the kitchen, making engine noises.

-/-

Shiro is nine, and spending the summer with his father in Japan. Mum and he fly in to Tokyo together; then Shizuka is staying over at grandma's, and Shiro and his father take a plane to Hokkaido. They have a small country house in the mountains there, and it's their own little tradition that each year they go there for a couple of weeks. Father doesn't like Tokyo very much.

Once Shiro is passed over to father, the first couple of hours are always awkward. Shirogane Takeo clears his throat and says something quiet in Japanese; Shiro blinks without understanding.

"Does she not talk to you in Japanese?"

"We talk both. It depends. You're just being quiet!"

Takeo sighs with a little sad smile. "You're so grown now. Every time I see you, it's like you're a different person. My little boy…"

Shiro gives him a reassuring pat on the hand, feeling slightly strange at the intense, quiet focus his father watches him with. "I'm still the same, dad."

"Look at you. You're so big in the shoulders! Does she still send you to those martial arts classes?"

Shiro puffs his chest proudly. "All the time." But then he flattens slightly as there is no immediate joy in his father's eyes, just concern.

"At the garrison? Are they very violent?"

"Sometimes," he says, and Takeo sighs again.

"I didn't want that for you, Takashi. Your mother and I… we both just want you to be happy, it just seems like we can never agree on how. But violence is never the way."

"I know, dad."

"There's a difference between knowing and understanding, love." His father's eyes are intense as he stares into his own. "Your mother works for the American military. I wanted you free from the shadow that casts, but… if this is the least I can do…" He trails off, and Shiro doesn't quite know what to say. He keeps silent.

After a moment, Takeo shakes off his reverie. "We're going to have a nice retreat, son."

"Yeah! Like every year."

His father nods with a smile that crinkles his eyes in a sad, sad way, and Shiro wants him to say something else so he could understand the source of this sadness – it must be more than him practicing karate and capoeira at the garrison, surely? – but he doesn't. They talk about school instead.

But it's all forgotten when they reach their little house. Hokkaido in the summer is beautiful. It's so different from the desert too, in the mountains the rains come suddenly and without a warning, and a couple of times they are caught on the hiking trail by torrential rain. They laugh it off. His father, wary and silent in the city, becomes a different person in the mountains; he laughs freely and talks to him about herbs and plants, insects and animals they see around them. Shiro listens to the rhythm of the mountains, the shuddering of leaves at the sudden blow of wind, or the quiet buzz of a bumblebee; the mountain air fills his lungs with air that is so different than the air of the desert, full of light and freshness and life. One day, he finds a little clear volcanic lake just off a small cliff, and a sudden fancy passes over him to dive –

His father spots him as he is shrugging off his underwear at the top of the cliff. "Takashi! What do you _think_ you're doing?!"

"I'm flying!"

"You're- you're _not_ flying, you're about to hurt yourself! Don't move!"

"I'll be fine, dad! I can do it! I've done this at the pool!"

"Takashi!"

Shiro jumps –

and he's flying, he's _flying,_ the wind swishes in his ears and for a split second he feels so wild, so immensely free, that the world shrinks to a brilliant speck of joy.

Then he crashes into his father.

Takeo had jumped immediately below him, with the timing Shiro could only describe as _absolutely perfect._ He cradles his son into his arms as they both tumble headfirst into the water, and only now can Shiro see that the rocks are sharp, they're porous and scratching and harsh, and there's red in the water, and for a second he can't realise why –

Takeo drags them both out of the lake. He's bleeding. Damping Shiro's fall tossed him straight into the sharp rocks.

Shiro starts to cry loudly. Takeo hugs him tight, his hurt legs splayed gracelessly on the ground. "It's okay. It's okay, son. I promise it's okay. I'd do it for you every time. If I only could."

They shudder and cry together and huddle close for a long time. Then he helps his dad back to the house where they dress the wounds, and then they sit together, meditating.

Shiro is too young to understand, but when he comes back to this memory much, much later, he realises that was the first time he's witnessed self-sacrifice.

-/-

Shiro is twelve.

"Look who's come back from his mystical mountain retreat. Didja work out with those crazy Japanese monks?"

"Shut up, Adam."

"I'll make you shut up."

If there's anything Shiro doesn't like about leaving each summer for a month, it's missing martial practice. They've moved on from practicing each art separately, karate and capoeira and taekwondo, to something that the garrison teachers promise is what proper cadets learn. Shiro likes it better. It feels more natural and less constraining, for someone that has been practicing so many various techniques; and he can freestyle his way from almost any dire straits when he's allowed just to be himself. Except when Adam is concerned.

He's the same age, and also very good. Not as strong as Shiro, but a smidgeon faster. And every time Shiro leaves for Hokkaido, that gives Adam an edge. It just doesn't seem very fair.

They're partnered together – again. They're on the mat, locked in an ugly horizontal wrestle, Shiro's left elbow digging into Adam's chest, Shiro's right arm twisted at a painful angle. Both are gritting their teeth, breathing heavily; neither has the strength to break the impasse.

The instructor calls them out. Adam lets go of him and falls back on the ground immediately, panting. "You friggin' colossus, Shirogane!"

Shiro is lying face down, but he's grinning a tired grin nevertheless. "That was good."

"Must be that secret martial monastery training. Admit it."

Shiro smiles underneath his breath.

"It's not fair," Adam says after a moment, when it's evident the instructor is giving him a break to watch over the other couple of opponents. "You're always so much stronger when you go back. Because you probably have all those shaolin monks to train with you! But if you're not here for me, no-one else is good enough."

Shiro blinks in disbelief. "Are you being nice to me?"

Adam scoffs, visibly embarrassed, and rolls away from him. "Nah. I just said it's not fair."

Grinning, Shiro stares at the white ceiling of the training hall.

-/-

Shiro is thirteen, and he's standing close to the wall, trying to catch as much as he can of the voices from the living room. _Youngest… prodigy… wasting potential if not… simulator…_ His mother speaks in a low voice that he can't discern at all, but the voices of the other garrison officers are better fitted for running drills than for stealth. And what they are saying makes Shiro's heart flutter wildly in his chest. _He will be a pilot. A Galaxy Garrison pilot._

If mum agrees.

After a long while they all walk out, and if there's a glimmer of tears in mum's eyes, Shiro can't see it because she immediately scoops him into her arms and gives him a tight, breath-stealing hug. He should feel embarrassed to have the garrison officers see that, but Shizuka doesn't give him time to think that before she straightens up fiercely. "I don't want this for him. But saying no would be just one more obstacle on his way, wouldn't it? And I know very well what my son does with obstacles."

Shiro thinks about asteroid belts, and the cracks in the gigantic chunks of rocks on the way of his glorious white ship. It's not just play anymore. He's been flying the simulator for a year and a half now, and if Shiro knows anything about himself at all, it's that whatever he can't dodge, he'll blast through.

-/-

Hokkaido is cold this summer. They scale the mountain in silence, both deep in thought.

"Takashi…"

He turns his head to look at his father. Takeo wears a sad expression.

"Is that what you want? The military? I won't stop you if you do. I just… isn't there any other path that would make you happier?"

"I'll be a pilot, dad. A space explorer. There's nothing better than that!" Shiro shakes his head. "It's not the army for the sake of the army. It's scouting the final frontier. This is what I've always wanted! Always!"

Takeo turns his face away. For the first time, Shiro sees the lines of age under his eyes. "Has your mother ever told you why we're not together anymore?"

That gives Shiro pause. He thinks about it carefully. "You didn't want to live in America anymore."

"Yes. But that's only part of it. Your mum's dad, Matsuoka Taro… He was an explorer exactly like you want to be. Always spoke about going further than any man had ever gone before. And when he died on Venus…" Takeo's face is still and dark like the sky over the mountain. "Your mother… refused to give up. She threw herself into the space exploration programme. She was living his dream, and forgot about her own. I couldn't just stand and take it."

Shiro is silent for a long moment. Then, when he finally speaks, his voice is quiet.

"But this is _my_ dream. Mum never- she didn't want me to do it. It was my decision all along."

"I believe you, son. But the fact of the matter is, you're not just going to be an explorer. You're going to be an officer. An American soldier." Takeo's face is sorrowful. "Can you promise me something?"

Shiro nods, wide eyes on his father's face.

"Always remember to see the humanity in the person on the other side. Of the chain of command, of the argument, of the gun. The people you'll deal with, they'll want you to reduce you to a cog in that big military machine. But as long as you know to look for humanity… to give second chances… to just be kind… you'll hold on to yourself. Promise me that, Takashi. Promise me that you'll always search for that humanity."

Shiro is fourteen, and his hands are already calloused and strong when he reaches out for his father's own hand. He squeezes it tight, hoping it gives enough reassurance. "I promise, dad."

Takeo takes a deep breath. He holds it for a second, then lets it out in a long sigh – of relief tightly wound with worry.

"Then maybe there's hope for this family after all."


	2. A vessel for the dreams

_part II: a vessel for the dreams_

His first fighter is named GGV Dreamboat.

He feels slightly put off by it. It definitely seems like it's one of those mind games he's supposed to burst through if he's to pass – just another embarrassing joke for the cadet three years everybody's junior. Who names a _spaceship_ Dreamboat? An old lady trying to be funny, that's who. Or the sergeant trying to screw with the youngster.

He retaliates by winning with it the first garrison-wide cadet race. It goes slightly different than he'd hoped – now everyone caught on, and it appears he's just gained a nickname.

"Hey, Dreamboat! Good flying yesterday!"

Shiro grits his teeth fruitlessly. But then he swallows it and gives Annika his best smile. "I'll tell the old girl you said hi."

"Oh, I didn't mean the _ship_." Annika, a tall German fighter pilot, winks at him shamelessly. Then she walks away, hips swaying on absolute purpose, and Shiro sighs.

"You think that's ever gonna go away?"

"The love and affection of women? Just you stop working out. And winning flying contests." Adam shrugs at him. They're just catching up at the lunch break, Adam's still in the introductory courses, hoping to join the Galaxy Garrison in a years' time – sixteen, as it should be. But he doesn't seem bitter about it. By now, people have caught on that comparing themselves to Shiro was pointless – he is simply just a different category. "Unless you mean the nickname. Yeah, it's not going away."

Shiro looks him dead in the eye. "Are you saying I'm going to spend the rest of my military career as Takashi 'Dreamboat' Shirogane?"

"It could have been worse, you know."

" _How._ "

"Takashi 'Bad Kisser' Shirogane?"

Shiro splutters. Adam looks very pleased with himself. "See, told you it could get worse."

"How about Takashi 'Too Busy to Date' Shirogane? That should get the message across."

"No, I still think Bad Kisser would be more effective."

Shiro sighs, albeit with a smile. "This probably tells us a lot about human psyche."

"It's just selfishness. This is how we're wired. Everything else is nurture."

"That's too cynical, Adam."

"No, you're just too much of a cinnamon roll to understand it," says Adam, a wistful note sneaking into his voice. Shiro gives him a warm smile.

"We'll see. Two years in the military and I still haven't lost my faith in humanity."

"Takashi 'Cinnamon Roll' Shirogane."

"That's Commander Cinnamon Roll for you, cadet."

"Pfffth. You wish!" Adam snorts, but then shoots him a sideways glance. "Just checking though, you're not planning on becoming the commander in the next year, right? Because that would be a little too much for me to handle."

Shiro laughs out loud. Then the break is over and they go back to their respective classrooms, but he's still snickering under his breath.

-/-

When Adam finally gets into the garrison proper, Shiro gets picked for the fighter pilot stream. He's still much younger than everybody else, but now that he's seventeen, the differences begin to blur out; ages less significant than the skillsets they offer. He naturally rises to the top, and stays there. Adam wonders out loud why the other cadets haven't started hating him yet; Shiro asks him why _he_ doesn't hate him, and Adam just shakes his head disgruntledly.

The truth is, Shiro feels that he couldn't get them to hate him even if he wanted to. His team – him, a Czech engineer called Carolina, and a little scrawny comms officer who insists on them calling him "just Al" (his name is Alphonse Alighieri-Almundi) – get along great these days, and the team spirit seems to radiate across the year. And, because it just seems to go this way when he's concerned, they immediately get a nickname.

Shiro stands in front of his trusted spaceship early in the morning, feeling slightly puzzled.

"Al, why is Dreamboat all white today?"

Al wordlessly points towards the side of the hull. The entire spaceship, bow to stern, is covered with white powdered chalk – except the letters smudged out at the bottom, pronouncing the ship ' _Dreamboat, property of Team TALC_ '.

Carolina reaches them, and they contemplate their trusted spaceship in long silence. Shiro is the one to break it.

"So… TALC?"

"Because your name is Takashi. And mine Al. And Carolina's Carolina. You know. Talc. Which is white."

"But… I mean… why?"

"Where would you even get this much talc?"

"More importantly, who'd spend so much of their own money on this much talc?"

"Cadets!" The sergeant calls in from the holo in Al's comm. "Boarding status."

Shiro clears his throat. "In progress, sir. There's… talc involved."

"Then what the hell are your team talking about that you can't do it inside, Shirogane? Get on board."

"Aye, sir. Sir? There might be-"

"Move it, Shirogane!"

Shiro, Al, and Carolina stare at one another – and Shiro gives a solemn nod.

Then, in perfect synchrony, they run to the sides of the ship to doodle on it. Dreamboat reaches the assembly point ten minutes later, and it's covered in flowers and penises and some very offensive hiragana writing, and their suits and faces are completely white with chalk, and Shiro is _fine with it._

They're good. They're really, really good, all of them, and Shiro doesn't need the sergeants or the record tables to tell him that – he feels it in his bones. He _knows_ he's a prodigy. Matsuoka Taro's blood runs in his veins, and he's been flying the simulator since he was eleven. But there's more to that than just the rare talent, and he remember his father's lessons about interconnectedness of nature: a cockpit is an environment like anything else.

Carolina is a hothead, and gets caught up in the spirit of the race; Al is difficult to get through to and a worrywart, but a brilliant one. At the start, they butted heads often, and it would fall to Shiro to diffuse the situation; now that they've flown together for a year, Carolina channels her energy into the smooth running of the ship, and that gives Al the peace of mind. And when Al is calm, Shiro can focus on his own best job – wheezing through every obstacle on his way.

If at the start they were bothered at all that their pilot is a seventeen-year-old, it changed after they'd soared to the top of the ranking. It feels good. He's picked as the class representative to the cadet command board, and they score a few minor victories against the garrison – improve the rations at the mess, for instance, after a couple of cadets got a stomach flu – and as the legend of Dreamboat Shirogane begins to soar, he notices a subtle effect it has on one pilot in particular.

Each fighter pilot has to improve their score at least once a term to keep their position in the ranking. If not, they are downgraded. At the end of each year, the rankings of fighter and cargo flights are compared, and there is a chance for the best cargo pilot to receive a promotion – at the cost of the worst fighter pilot. Shiro doesn't like this system. The war of attrition between the cargo and fighter classes is fierce, and it's not good for morale – although he supposes it's great for the one that gets the upgrade.

This year, Annika is at the bottom of the ranking – and surprisingly so, seeing as she's suddenly dropped from the fifth top position. She _is_ a good pilot, and a confident leader, even if the way she smirks at him makes him uncomfortable. But Annika doesn't smile much these days, sitting alone at the mess and snapping at people that attempt to come closer; even her own team stay away, especially Daria the comm officer keeping her distance. Shiro observes her carefully, and the silence around her tells him everything he needs to hear.

He finds her in the evening, when the lights are already out and the cold of the desert at night is penetrating his uniform. She's standing at the garrison gates, a small wick of a cigarette in between her lips a single point of ember-red light, and Shiro raises his eyebrows at that. Smoking is long since gone from the military.

"Annika?"

"What's up, Dreamboat." She greets him with a nod, but her smile is not genuine. "Can't sleep from all that adrenaline?"

Shiro smiles at her warily. They had won the penultimate race of the year; Annika came in last again. "Easy come, easy go."

"Maybe for you, you damn prodigy. For everybody else, it's easy go, _super hard come._ "

"Look, I…" Shiro hesitates. "It can't be easy on you. I'm sorry it didn't work out for you and Daria."

Annika turns to face him, fire in her eyes, but he doesn't flinch as she comes closer. "What did she tell you?"

"Nothing. She didn't have to."

They stare each other down. The light on Annika's cigarette flickers and shivers as she's gritting her teeth on the wick. "None of your business, Dreamboat. You're going to tell me I'm not supposed to date in my team? Noted. _Thanks._ Now sod off."

"Annika," he tries again. "You're a good pilot. It would be a shame if you were to lose out just because you can't agree outside of the cockpit-"

"Why do you care? _You_ 're not the one losing the fighter rank, right? Just go away."

"Annika-"

"Look, Shirogane, you look very cute in that suit, but you know what? You're still just a kid. These things happen. Deal with it."

Shiro grits his teeth. This is unfair. This is unfair on Annika, and Daria, and most of all their team engineer who's caught up in the middle of it all with no fault of his own. They shouldn't have gotten involved, but the system shouldn't penalise them for a sudden drop like that. None of them deserve to be demoted. Shiro knows it as clearly as he knows that his own team is the best.

Annika waves him off. Shiro walks away, leaving her alone with her lung-contaminating cigarette, but he's not backing down on this. He's got a plan.

-/-

He talks it over with Carolina and Al. Neither of them are particularly thrilled, but they agree to come along.

The last race of the year is along the mountains. He knows that path like the back of his own hand. He's flown there with mother, and alone, on a hover and a speeder and finally a proper ship; he knows exactly when a precarious movement would drag them down to the bottom of the canyon, and when he can comfortably speed up on an open terrain. As he sits down to the controls, he feels the adrenaline coursing through his veins. It could potentially be quite dangerous…

"All systems clear," says Al. "Takashi, you really think this is worth it?"

"Engines are go. Of course he thinks that! What if it were us dropping out?" Carolina double-checks the thrusters. "Not that I think Annika doesn't deserve it, but poor Sven? He'll be demoted with the both of them. Stupid system."

"That's what I'm saying! We have to help them." Shiro clenches his hands on the controls. "Dreamboat is go!"

They take off, and a cloud of focus descends on Shiro's mind. They get to the front of the race easily enough, and he can almost feel Al's frustration radiating from his hunched shoulders; Al doesn't like to give away the victory. But they're a team, and he puts his own fancies aside to help them. The desert is swishing around them as they do a horizontal lap, and then they move up in a sharp vertical rise, coming up to the mountaintops and diving back in between them. The radar shows the rest of the ships hot on their tails, with Annika at the very end of the peloton again.

Shiro navigates through the mountains with natural ease, gliding in between sharp edges of the crevasses, the speed increasing steadily as they're about to blast into the open space. The ship is operating in peak condition, and Shiro imagines himself amongst the pitch black darkness of space, the mountains floating in vacuum of the asteroid belt, and he's cutting his way through the endless cosmos in search of the new horizons, in search of a new Earth to defend –

They're out there in the open. It's the third and last stage of the race. Takeoff on the sandy desert, then the mountains, and then the liminal area where the mountains crumble into dead rock. There's a moment where he'll need to focus even more –

"Carrie! Now!" he yells on the secure channel. And then he lowers the steering sticks, bringing Dreamboat minimally down – just enough to brush their left engine against a precariously sharp tall rock.

"Engine failure!" shrieks Carolina and shuts it off manually. Red lights fill the cockpit. Dreamboat is rolling wildly, all three of them hanging on to their seatbelts for dear life; Shiro can hear Al muttering to himself nervously. As he's manoeuvring the rocks on one engine, he's watching the other pilots overtake them in seconds.

"Dreamboat, status report! Dreamboat, do you copy?"

Al looks Shiro dead in the eye. "This is Dreamboat to central command. We grazed a rock! Left engine shutting down! Manoeuvring to safety!"

"Dreamboat, are you airborne?"

"Affirmative, sir! Attempting to reboot the engine manually!"

"Cadet Shirogane, land the ship immediately!"

Shiro grits his teeth with tension. There's just one last vessel to pass them, and he just needs to give Annika a _little bit_ of a headstart. Just three seconds longer. "Negative! Terrain unsafe! The crew would-"

"Cadet Shirogane, this is not a request!"

Annika passes them. Carolina flips a stat, and the left engine hums back to life.

"All engines operational!"

"Copy that." There is barely restrained anger in the sergeant's voice. "Dreamboat, report to base. Immediately."

Shiro doesn't say anything else, but the atmosphere grows cold and worried in the cockpit. They finish the race last.

They disembark, and the flurry of technicians take over the grazed engine of Dreamboat. Shiro feels a spike of panic as he stares at them, hoping to all that's sacred that the fake black box log Carolina and Al had planted would be enough to fool them.

Annika pushes through the crowd of technicians to find him. She stares at him, completely at a loss, her face shifting between fury, joy, humiliation, and gratitude. Shiro stares back, and just shrugs.

"Easy come, easy go."

"You-" she starts, but then she just walks up to him in fast, angry strides and hugs him tight.

Al and Carolina exchange glances, and then jump on top of them. Shiro feels breathless and satisfied and shaky and _happy._

-/-

That sensation holds all the way to Iverson's office. The sergeant is standing in front of him, visibly angry.

"We know what you did, cadet Shirogane."

Shiro bows his head low, like his father would. "My apologies, sir. I shouldn't have flown this low."

"Stop playing the fool, Shirogane. You're the best pilot in this garrison. I know for a fact that you've flown this track numerous times before. You grazed that rock on purpose and you may as well admit it." The sergeant is frustrated at him, and Shiro feels genuinely sorry for defying his high expectations – he's been good with the cadets. But he's not sorry enough to actually confess.

"Apologies, sir. I may not be as good as you think of me."

"Are you involved with cadet Grossbaum? Is that what it is? You damaged the garrison property, Shirogane, you'd be lucky if _you_ get the cargo pilot rank!"

An officer behind him clears his throat. "I should say, Captain, that if the cadet actually grazed the engine on purpose, then he is even more talented still. And let's not forget that he then had to continue the race on one engine. Considering all of this, a minor scar on the ship is of little consequence."

"Thank you for your input, Sam," says Iverson, and Shiro looks back to see the science officer that spoke. He heard about him before, but in person Samuel Holt seems very thin and very nerdy, lively sparks flying in his eyes behind in the collected professional expression. "But if he _had_ done it on purpose, then we're dealing with a completely different set of consequences. Are we to believe this was an honest mistake, Shirogane?"

Shiro bows again. "Yes, sir."

Iverson looks back to Samuel Holt. "And what does the technical report say?"

The lively eyes of the science officer rest on Shiro, and he gives an imperceptible nod. "It was a bump, but it reset the engine. A minor issue. Certainly not the cadet's fault."

The sergeant bristles. "And I'm to believe that my best pilot _suddenly_ forgot how to fly in an open space?"

Samuel Holt's eyes twinkle, and he doesn't take them off Shiro. "Everybody has a right to an honest mistake, Sergeant. Even teen prodigies. Especially as they get out of the tricky situation with as cool a head as this young man here. Kept the altitude on one engine, no less! And then got it back to operational in seconds!"

"This is ridiculous. I've seen him fly every day for two years now, and he _doesn't_ make mistakes like this! I'm going to make an official report-"

"There is clearly nothing to report, except minor ship damage," interrupts Iverson, and Shiro bows his head low again to mask the relief. "Cadet Shirogane, do be cautious next time. I'm told this race would have won your team a perfect score."

"Yes, sir."

"Oh, and Captain?" asks Samuel Holt. Shiro doesn't raise his head. He can only imagine sergeant Andrews' fury.

"Yes, Sam?"

"I could use a quick-thinking pilot at the test lab. You think I could borrow this one when he's not being battered against the rocks?"

"I don't see why not." There's a smile in the captain's voice. "Just make sure he doesn't break any more of the equipment."

"Captain-" Sergeant tries, but the captain cuts him off.

"You should give the cadet the benefit of the doubt, Andrews. How old is he? Sixteen?"

Shiro raises his head. "Seventeen, sir."

"Let the seventeen-year-old err every once in a while."

"Aye, sir," says the sergeant with a tight voice, and then walks out. Shiro is unsure whether he should follow.

"Come on, cadet Shirogane. I'm sure your team wants you back." Samuel Holt casts him a big smile. "I'm sure we'll see more of each other soon."

-/-

Annika improves her rating and is kept as a fighter pilot, and the legend of Dreamboat Shirogane takes flight. Shiro isn't impressed.

"This dumb nickname stuck."

"I told you it would." Adam and he are walking back to the barracks from another sparring session, where Shiro had been invited to coach the _younger_ cadets – same age as him, but three years behind in terms of garrison hierarchy. Even more so, these days, now that Sam Holt has taken over his unofficial mentoring. "Just embrace it. Dreamboat Shirogane, saviour of fraternising pilots, reporting for duty."

Shiro rolls his eyes, straightening his uniform. The little nametag on his right breast is partially torn from the spar. "It's just not very… dignified."

Adam's eyes follow his fiddling hands. "At least you're recognisable. Even without that nametag, cadet Takashi Shiro."

Shiro sighs. The left part of the nametag did fall off. "With my luck, that's just the start of another nickname."

Adam stares at him for a moment, and then a smirk curves his lips. "Well, maybe you _can_ get rid of the Dreamboat. With something even dumber."

Shiro covers his eyes with his palm. "Please, this is inhumane."

"Shiro the Hero."

He moves his lips around the sound. "Shiro?"

"No, Shiro the Hero. All rolled into one. So that people can be very nice and very condescending at the same time. You know, like Dreamboat. Fight fire with fire."

"I like Shiro."

Adam sighs. "And you just doomed it. This is the _army._ No-one's going to call you a name you _like._ "

"Well, I'm gonna make them."

"Just stick with Shiro the Hero for a while. It'll get shortened after a while. Maybe."

Shiro nods and walks to the fourth year barracks. Adam lingers at the path, looking at him with an unreadable glance. He stops at the door to look back.

"What is it?"

"Does it mean anything?"

Shiro nods. And then he grins. "You've just basically called me white in Japanese."

Adam reddens slightly. "Sorry. I mean- uh. Sorry."

"No, it doesn't translate. You'd have to say _gaijin_ for a Caucasian. Then I'd probably take offence." Shiro gives him a brilliant smile. "But _shiro_ is just colour white. You know, purity, innocence. Glory. The sky."

They stand opposite each other, Shiro's hand on the doorframe already, but he's stalling; and so is Adam, standing in the middle of the path with unreadable eyes. But they are soft, eyebrows curving upwards in a tight smile, and Shiro feels strange once he realises what that expression is. The evening is dark and warm; summer is just about to begin.

"It suits you," Adam says finally, and takes the first step away-

"Adam?"

"Yes, Shiro?"

It sounds strange. But he likes it. And now that he knows… he's never been one for spending too much time in front of an obstacle.

"We should grab dinner sometime."

Adam flushes a deep, dark red. He's speechless for a moment, and Shiro beams at him, thinking about how he should definitely not _laugh_ because Adam would probably take it very much the wrong way. But it _was_ funny. There has been a direct path to what he wanted, and he took it – it really shouldn't have been as shocking as it was.

And now, with the summer coming, he'd have more free time…

"I- I didn't know you…"

"I honestly didn't either," says Shiro after a moment. "But why not? We can try."

Adam looks at him like he was an alien coming to invade the earth, his face completely red, rising panic in his eyes. "You… what? You can't just- what?"

"Adam." He crosses the distance in between them, and Adam straightens up so tightly he looks painful. "Relax. It's just dinner."

"Just- just dinner- you fucking insufferable _cinnamon roll,_ you!" Adam boils over, taking a step back. "Do you even realise how long I had a crush on you? You can't just step in and… _invite me to dinner!_ "

"Well, why didn't you?"

" _Because that's not how people work, Shiro!_ "

"I think you're being silly-"

Adam makes a few curt steps forward and kisses him.

He's smaller than him, shorter and leaner. Shiro knows his body quite well from the years of sparring lessons. But it feels different this time. They're not struggling against each other, even though their arms naturally find their way to the pressure points. Adam's lips are feverishly warm in that night weather, reaching up to press against him as if they were asking for a gift from the sky, and maybe they were. Shiro kisses him back. The wind from the desert rises up to sweep the dust around them. 

As they pull apart, Adam's eyes are frantic. He leans his head and two clenched fists against Shiro's chest.

"I can't believe you just did that."

"I didn't do anything. You did the kissing."

"And what if this doesn't work out? I've been holding back because if I ever made a mistake, and ruin this entire thing-"

"You know what Sam Holt told me the other day?"

Adam strikes his chest weakly, his forehead buried in Shiro's uniform jacket. "You're not quoting Science Officer Fucking Holt in the middle of our big conversation."

"He recommended me for the tests next year," Shiro says quietly. "I'd be a full pilot. Six years before everybody else. Youngest ever."

Adam stills against him. "What did you say?"

"I… it's just so soon. I wasn't sure. And then he says to me… if you get too worried about what could go wrong, you might miss a chance to do something great."

"And Shiro the Hero never misses his moment of greatness."

"No. I never want to."

Adam sighs. Shiro embraces him tight, feeling the weight and warmth of another human being in his arms, of his friend and – if they don't miss a chance – something much greater. They're still seventeen, and the summer's just about to start, and who knows about that new world that awaits him once he becomes a true pilot? But right here, right now… there's this new world that's opened up to him, and he wants it. He wants to at least try.

The fourth year barracks' door opens, and one of his classmates walks out – and he stops dead in his tracks at he sees the two of them. "Hey! Dreamboat! Who are you snogging over there?"

"It's Shiro the Hero, actually" says Adam loudly, with no small amount of acidity in his voice. But his smile grows softer when Shiro doesn't let go.

"None of your business, Sven." Shiro very purposefully squeezes Adam even tighter. The other man twists in his arms to knee him in the groin. Shiro steps in between his legs, and his embrace becomes a chokehold; after three long seconds Adam taps out.

Sven blinks, and then disappears back in the barracks. Shiro clears his throat.

Adam pulls away from the chokehold and begins to laugh hysterically, so much so that Shiro's smile grows worried after a minute. "You- you're really something else, Shiro. You're…"

"Your date for Friday night?" suggests Shiro, and Adam nods with a big grin.


	3. The night of the crash

_part III: the night of the comet crash_

Father is flying from Japan for his pledging ceremony in October. That, along with his new duties over the summer, means that for first time in nineteen years Shiro is not spending his summer in Hokkaido. Something aches in his chest as that thought.

There's also something else bothering him. He broaches the subject of his grandfather a couple of times, but his mother won't speak about him. Her grey eyes are sad and impassive, and she refuses to remember – even though there is still a picture of him around the house, a broad-shouldered, robust man in his fifties, smiling to the camera, one arm around Shizuka; both him and his daughter in the American military uniform. Mother changed relatively little from that time.

Finally, a week before the ceremony, Shiro corners her. "I dug up the garrison archives on grandfather."

Shizuka looks up sharply from her documentation. They're sitting in the living room in the evening, the paper screen just as cracked as it had been ten years ago. "I told you to leave it be, Takashi. This is for your own good."

"You can't tell me that. This is my family just as much as it's yours!"

"You don't know what you're asking about."

" _You_ don't know what it's like." Shiro clenches his fists tightly. "I'm following him. I'm following _in his footsteps._ He's the only one in our family that did exactly what I always wanted to do. And you won't say anything! Why? What is there to hide?!"

"Takashi." His mother stands up to look at him with darkened eyes. "We don't yell in this house."

He stands up too. He's taller than her now, his arms and chest dwarfing hers. "I thought we didn't keep secrets in this house either."

"There is nothing to say."

"I found the records, mum! The Venus mission was a success! Both of the other team members made it back! Why did _he_ die out there?! Do you know?!"

"Enough!" Shizuka bangs her fist on the table. Shiro falls quiet.

She notices the deathly still expression on his face, and her own expression changes: regret and shame overtake it for a split second, and then all there is left is sorrow. "You don't know what you're trying to bring on yourself."

He is silent, staring at her with burning eyes. Shizuka looks at him for a long moment, and then sighs and sits back down.

"Like father, like son."

He's now standing over her. The comment brings back a memory he's been replaying over and over. "Dad said you changed after his death. That you threw yourself into his work."

"He's… not wrong." Shizuka lowers her head to stare at the table. "I wanted to be a space explorer. Just like you, Takashi. But that was a long time ago."

"Why did you stop?"

"There was no future for me there. I was burning the candle from both ends. And now that I had you… I couldn't afford it."

Shiro looks at the pen in his mother's hand. It's shaking. He doesn't know whether he upset her this much, or whether it's something more. "What is it, mum? Why did he die out there? Why can't you just tell me?"

She doesn't look up to him as she speaks.

"I wish you could understand what I'm trying to protect you from. Please, Takashi. Just let it go. This is only for your own good."

He clenches his fists helplessly. "I _don't_ understand! I _can't!_ Because _you're not telling me!"_

"Can't you just trust me on that?"

"I will find out myself, if I have to. But I will know." He casts her one last glance and walks out of the room.

As he walks out of the flat, he can hear the pen drop on the floor – and then a quiet, heartwrenching sobbing. It's torn, muted, as if she's stuck a fist in her face.

He grits his teeth and walks on.

-/-

He's at Adam's place. It's very tidy, with LED lamps giving the black-and-white lounge a clean, fresh feel. It fits Adam himself quite well. The city is dark behind the windows.

Shiro's sitting on the couch, head in palms. "I just can't understand."

"I think her entire point is that you shouldn't." Adam looks at him from the coffee express, the smell of freshly ground beans coming into his nostrils like a physical relief. "For the record, I'm on your side here. But maybe if it's really as awful as she makes it out to be…"

"What can be that awful? It's my grandfather! I don't even remember him! If something terrible happened there, it won't affect me emotionally. But I have a right to know."

"Shiro…" Adam sits down next to him, passing him a mug of coffee, and Shiro hunches over it, falling down into himself. He imagines the three people on a ship, proud and Venus-bound. One of them, a robust fifty-something, has a face too similar to his own. _What happened there?_

"Shiro. You're overthinking this." Adam lays a chaste hand on his shoulder. Then, as if after a moment to gather strength, it moves along his neck to cup his cheek. Shiro closes his eyes, inhaling the coffee and the clean smell of the apartment.

"I just need to know."

"You've known that he died out there your entire life. How's that any different?"

"She wouldn't shut me out like that if it wasn't important. I just never asked the right questions until now."

Adam hesitates. Then he pulls at Shiro's cheek gently, fingers tugging at the outline of his jaw until Shiro raises his head to face him. His eyes are still closed; but he can feel Adam's breath on his face, and then the shy, uncertain dry lips that brush against his. He doesn't make a move to kiss him back, and after a long still moment Adam retreats.

"I'm sorry," he says in a quiet voice. Shiro shakes his head weakly.

"I'm just not in the mood."

"You can't keep thinking about this forever." Adam sounds tired, and Shiro opens his eyes to look at him. He's hurt. He doesn't take rejection well, even as minor as this one; and Shiro supposes that to some extent, it's his own fault. They've never… quantified their relationship. It remains nebulous, vague, somewhere in between close friendship and romantic involvement; and if he's being completely honest with himself, he enjoys it this way. There will be time for commitment. But Adam clearly doesn't draw pleasure from this impasse.

Shiro supposes it's about the level of control they can exert. He feels confident in this. Adam doesn't.

They sit in silence for a long while, sipping coffee. Shiro offers a small gesture of reconciliation: he loops his arm over Adam's shoulders. After a moment the man leans against him with a sigh.

"Did you figure out where you're going to live next year?"

Shiro shakes his head, ignoring the intrusive thoughts about grandfather. "No. Just not barracks, now that I don't have to. Five years of that was long enough."

"Why don't you take this place?"

Shiro casts him a surprised glance. "But you live here, Adam."

"I will still be in the barracks, remember? Not all of us are damn prodigies getting the licence six years ahead of schedule." Adam snorts to himself, and Shiro just watches him, trying to understand where this is going. "And you're away each summer anyway. I thought about it and… it would be convenient for you, right?"

It would. Before, he thought he'd live with mother for a little bit longer before finding himself a right place – but now, it doesn't seem like such a good idea. "If you don't mind me staying here, I gladly will. Just let me know about the rent."

"Don't be ridiculous."

Shiro tightens his lips. "I won't if I can't pay you."

"Shiro." Adam looks at him intently. "My parents both moved out, my sister has her own house, and I'm not using this apartment at all when I'm at the garrison. Just take the fucking deal. It's not like I'm asking you to move in with me."

"No?"

Adam is melting under his gaze. "Unless you want to. Which you don't. I- I'd settle for having someone to visit at the weekends. A friend."

"Adam, I…" Shiro feels like he's being pulled in. His life is shifting and changing course, and he _knew_ that ever since the test results were announced. Adulthood comes, and so does the proper military life. If his nebulous relationship is to survive in that new life, perhaps it does need a change…

He needs to be decisive.

"I'll pay you half of what you'd charge a tenant. And you'll stay for the weekends and over summer."

Adam stares at him with an odd look on his face. "You think you're smart, eh, Shirogane?"

"Not really. I'm bidding against myself here." Shiro flashes a smile. "But that's seriously my last offer."

"Deal," Adam says, slightly breathlessly. Shiro leans in and kisses him, and the other man is warm and pliant in his arms; somehow, in an unknowable way, his own mere presence is enough to reduce Adam's spiky cynical personality to a bathful of warm goo. There's an immense sense of power it in.

The kisses grow heated, and it's turning into one of their usual spars, but Adam's heart isn't in it; Shiro wins almost too easily, pinning him flat to the couch with one knee lodged in between his thighs. Shiro stills on the top of him, taking in the flushed face of his best-friend-turned-not-sure-what, his thin lips parted helplessly, eyes squeezed shut, ragged, uneven breaths shaking his narrow torso; and he feels like he's on the verge of something important, something that could bring him immense joy but that could also ram him into the ground like a crashing comet. He hesitates –

"Shiro," whispers Adam helplessly. It's nothing short of a moan.

 _If you get too worried about what could go wrong…_

"I'm not going anywhere," Shiro whispers back into his lips, and he means it.

-/-

For the second time in a week, the Dreamboat team is sneaking into the garrison archives. Shiro is watching the door, ready to call it off at any second through the combat-level comm. Carolina and Al are digging through the data, holo-algorithms flickering orange through their fingers.

Al is downloading it on a little drive in his pocket. It's probably a grave offence, but after their stint with crashing the engine, they pretty much no longer care. "You want everything, Shiro? Everything-everything? That's a lot of data."

"Everything," Shiro confirms, scanning for heat signatures amongst the servers. The mounted computer units flicker red and yellow on the scanner.

Carolina opens a random file and makes a face. "What, like even his scores as a cadet? Test flight videos? That sort of thing?"

"Everything!"

"Gee, you're really keen on your grandpa, aren't you?" Carolina closes the file and reboots another node. The archives are decentralised, and the information scattered across the server room, with only the command centre capable of accessing it all at once; any intruder would have to manually search for the proper library. That's why they only got partial info last time; but now, with the garrison still mostly empty for summertime, Shiro is willing to stay here as long as he has to.

"Medicals," says Al, and Shiro hides an impatient grimace.

"Yes, medicals too!"

"No… I found his medicals. A lot of them. A _lot._ There's something off about this."

Shiro could punch the air. "Download the whole of it."

"Shiro, that's- Al's right, there's something fishy about it. There are two copies of a medical for each date. And they're not identical!"

"What's the difference?"

Through the comm, he can hear Carolina typing furiously, and then a ping of results. "Shit. Shit, Shiro, you need to see this."

Shiro lets out a calming breath, reigning in his impatience. "What's the difference, Carolina?"

"One marks the pilot as healthy," says Al quietly. "The other… doesn't."

A cold shiver runs along his back. "Cross-reference it with the date of the Venus mission."

"Copy that." More furious typing. "Found it."

"What does the unhealthy one say?"

Radio silence is all he can hear for a moment. Then Carolina speaks again, audibly stunned.

"It's… Becker's muscular dystrophy. He was sick. It says here… cardiac muscles weakened…"

Shiro feels cold. "What was the cause of the Venus death?"

"Cardiac arrest," says Al immediately. "Shiro, did you know about that?"

He shakes his head mutely into the empty space. "No."

"Is that what you were looking for?"

He doesn't answer. "Do you have that data?"

"Affirmative. Shiro, listen-"

"We're moving out then. Waiting for you at the main door."

Their retreat is silent, and they move across the corridor unseen; dodging the single patrol with ease – one patrol! _one!_ It was definitely summertime – they reach the barracks and leave their electronics in Al's personal safe. Except the drives with data on Matsuoka Taro. These Al hands to Shiro wordlessly.

Carolina is less restrained. "So he died in space because someone faked his medical? This will blow up everywhere if we let it out. I mean-"

"Let's not let it out, then," says Shiro. Team Dreamboat nod, but Carolina is still fiddly.

"This is huge. If they ever find the doctor that did that… court-martial is the last thing they're gonna worry about."

"Is that what this whole thing is about?" says Al quietly. "You were trying to figure out who killed your grandfather?"

Shiro rubs his temples. "I… I knew he didn't die of natural causes. But this? _Did_ anyone kill him? Why won't she just _talk to me_ about it?"

"But you know what? On the bright side…" Carolina gives him a smile. "That's a properly dramatic backstory for Shiro the Hero."

Shiro stares at the drive, barely hearing her. His pledging ceremony is in two days. He needs to find out before it. He's so close he can taste the metallic glint of the secret in his mouth, the tang of the tightly held truth. His grandfather died in space because a fake medical was submitted for the documentation. Now… what did his mother know?

"Shiro." Carolina lays a hand on his shoulder, and she needs to angle her hand uncomfortably high to do it. "No offence, and that's not how we think of you, but you're still… young. And under a lot of pressure lately. You're not thinking straight about this."

"Seconded," Al says quietly. "You'll be a proper pilot this year. "

"No, it's not that!" He hears his own voice, the frustration and anger in it, and squeezes his eyes shut for a second, breathing deeply. _Or maybe it is._ Team Dreamboat are still looking at him with obvious concern.

"Listen, Shiro… no-one is happy that you're leaving."

"I'm not leaving. I'll still be in the garrison every day."

"As a _pilot,_ not a cadet," says Carolina. "So maybe… you should let up on your grandpa and just enjoy the rest of the time we have together? You could probably access those files legally once you get the clearance."

"Especially if you're his descendant in a straight line." Al nods. "Have a proper internal investigation if you want to. Find the people responsible. You don't need to do that _now._ "

Shiro takes a deep breath.

They're right.

And he's been ignoring this tight knot in his stomach that clenches at every thought of the pledging ceremony. He's been working towards it his entire life. He wants it. He wants nothing else _but_ to be a pilot, and he's born to do it. And yet – now that it's coming – he's just nineteen, and the world is shifting around him, and he just needs to take the plunge.

And he will. It's the waiting that eats him up.

"Hey." Carolina bumps him with her fist. "You know what we should do before you leave?"

"What?"

"Take Dreamboat flying one last time," says Al, and his narrow face is opening up with a rare hopeful smile. "What do you think?"

"So you're saying…" Shiro blinks at him, caught off guard. "Hijack the ship?"

"Change the logs in the system. I can do this. And since this is the last time we might fly together…"

There's suddenly something tight in is chest. "In three years' time-"

"You will probably be in space or something," interrupts him Carolina, and she opens up Al's wardrobe. There are three flight suits in there. "Just go with it, Shiro. One last hurrah. Before weend up with Annika or some other disaster. You in?"

He nods. He can't trust his voice not to crack.

Carolina looks at him, sighs, and then just gives him a tight hug. In a second he can feel Al's scrawny arms around him as well. "We're gonna miss you, you magical space prodigy thing. It's been pretty great."

"It has," agrees Al, and Shiro just nods, refusing to tear up. He fails.

-/-

One day before the ceremony, Shiro comes back to the house and silently makes himself breakfast. His mother stands at the door to the living room, and she looks as if she wants to say something, but then closes her mouth mutely.

"Do you want coffee?" Shiro asks neutrally after a moment.

She nods. "White, please."

He makes it. He's no expert, and the coffee isn't as good as Adam's, but as they woke up yesterday – he stayed over for the first time, two nights in a row, and Adam's arms were so tight around him the whole night that he felt like he'd slept in a straitjacket – he showed Shiro how to grind the beans properly. The smell stirs up memories from the night before.

They sit at the table together, his mother pulling up a seat next to him so they're shoulder to shoulder. "You stayed over at Adam's?"

He nods.

"You think you love him?"

"I… don't know," says Shiro after a long moment. "I care about him."

His mother doesn't say anything for a long while, so Shiro keeps eating. He thinks about Adam; that it was almost too easy if he put his mind to it. He made him scream. Shiro never lacked focus on the task…

He swallows the coffee and crosses his legs. Maybe it wasn't the most fortunate setup to think about those kinds of things.

"You can't toy with people, Takashi."

"I'm being honest about everything," he says, and his voice comes out harsher than he intended. What he doesn't say, _unlike some people,_ still resounds in the kitchen loud and clear.

His mother doesn't react to that. He can just see her knuckles whitening on the coffee cup.

"Your father is arriving today. You should pick him up from the airport at five."

Shiro nods.

There's a clock in the kitchen, an old, analogue machine. It measures out it ticks loudly, the only noise in the deafening silence around them. Tick. Tick. _Tick._ Time is passing, and Shiro wishes his new life would start already. If he could only zip through with his speeder…

"Takashi-"

"I know you're only doing this to protect me," he says in a tight voice. "I don't know what from. He died because of a faked medical, but how does that hurt _me?_ What are you not telling me, mum?"

Shizuka's face is completely white. "How did you find that medical?"

"Mum, please."

She snorts humourlessly, her eyes still on him. "Of course my son would find a way around. What was on it?"

"You tell me."

"Takashi, why won't you just leave it be? Please?"

A sudden ring at the door makes them both jump. They exchange glances and Shiro stands up to take the visitor.

It's father. In his white pleated linen shirt and trousers, he sticks out of the Western-style block of flats like a sore thumb. His face brightens up as he sees Shiro, and they embrace tightly; his father is now smaller than him, weaker than he remembers him being. Or maybe he's just grown stronger.

Shizuka peers at him behind Shiro's shoulder, her face impassive.

"Takeo."

His father gives a minute bow. "Shizuka."

She doesn't bow back, just staring at him with her hands on her hips, every inch the soldier. "I thought you were arriving in the afternoon."

"I caught an earlier connection. I was hoping I could take Takashi out for breakfast."

"Well, I don't see why not." Shiro feels like a child again, his past-times discussed over his head, between the two parents trying their utmost to be civil. "If that's what Takashi wants."

"Dad." Shiro steps away from him and now they form a triangle, the precarious balance between two parents and a son. This is his chance. "Why did grandpa Taro die?"

Surprise crosses his father's face, and all that was left of colour on Shizuka's cheeks disappears completely. "Why, son?"

"Just answer me."

"Takeo," his mother says in a sharp tone. " _Don't._ "

"I don't see why that's secret. He had a heart attack on Venus. Don't you know that already?"

"No. There's more to it." Shiro clenches his fists. "Someone faked his medical exams. He had some kind of disease that weakened his heart muscles. He should have never gone. _Why is that a secret?!_ "

Shiro's father looks at his mother and blanches. "Is that about Becker's-"

"Yes!" cries out Shiro at the same time when his mother yells "No!". Takeo's face turns to stone, cold and impassive. He closes his eyes, and Shiro is reminded of all their meditations together, of all the times father would just fall deep into himself, become still and unresponsive, only sign of life his rising and falling chest. Silence falls in the corridor.

"Please," Shiro says quietly. "I need to know."

"You have no idea what you're asking about." His mother is deathly pale. "You have _no idea_ what I'm trying to spare you."

"Shizuka."

They both look at his father. He gives her a small, curt nod.

"He should know."

"No! I've lived with this _every single day of my life_ and I won't bring this on my son. I _won't._ " Her eyes shine in her pale face, burning determination, and Shiro could scream.

"What if he has his own children?"

"He's gay, Takeo. If you missed that? A month a year doesn't give you a right to decide his life!"

"Neither does eleven months a year," says his father in a sharpest voice he's ever heard him speak. "He's an adult. You brought him up in the army. He _will_ find out eventually."

"He doesn't have to!"

"Takashi," says his father. "What you're asking will change your life. I can tell you if you say yes. But what your mother is trying to protect you from is _real,_ and you can trust us when we say that you're better off without that knowledge. What's your decision, son?"

Shiro hesitates. His mother is silent, her arms quivering convulsively. He's gazing into the abyss, the unimaginable depths of space. There may be an ocean of hurt on the other side. But he is nineteen years old, and an explorer, and the youngest pilot on the planet, and if he doesn't take the plunge –

They're saying he shouldn't. He trusts them. He loves them. Maybe it's not worth it.

But if he doesn't take the plunge…

"I want to know."

His mother takes a deep breath. "You have Becker's disease."

He stares at her.

"What she means to say is that you're a carrier-" says Takeo, but his mother cuts him off.

"I had him tested. He has it."

Shiro's vision focuses on her narrowly, the edges of his world blunting into a dark tunnel. "You had me tested?"

"When you were little. Now, the onset in our family is quite late. We're lucky. Your grandfather was fifty when it started really affecting his life. I've been feeling it for a year." Shizuka raises her trembling fingers, speaking quickly. "If you keep an active lifestyle, it won't affect you much at first, and it's perfectly possible to leave until old age with it."

Shiro looks at his own hands. A pilot's hands. They're still; but his focus slips and he sees his mother again, fingers shivering slightly as she balls them into fists again.

"I wanted you to live your youth without that constant shadow."

He can still hear the ticking of the clock in the kitchen. It grows in his ears until it's the only thing he hears, the tolling of passing time.

His time is… limited.

His mother's face cracks. "I'm- I was trying to spare you."

"How long?" he says quietly.

"Impossible to know," Takeo says and lays a gentle hand on his shoulder. "Your entire natural life. But you know the value of time now."

" _He didn't have to!_ " Angry, anguished tears are streaming down his mother's face. "Living with this- obsessing about whether it starts- this is what we've just given our child, Takeo! You've just taken all his time! Filled it with this constant worry!"

Shiro stares at her with unseeing eyes. _Becker's disease._ He thinks about his grandfather in space, heart giving out in the Venusian atmosphere. It wasn't that Jupiter trip, but still- it was a frontier that wasn't breached, a cause worth dying for. "Did grandpa fake those medicals himself?"

"He did," says his father, and an old frustration rings in his voice. "He never when to stop. And after that, your mother followed."

His parents stare at each other across the corridor. Shiro can feel the heartbreak in the air, the old ache that never healed.

"You don't know what it's like to live your days like they're numbered," says Shizuka in a tight, throttled voice. "That your body can decide to spill apart on you any moment. You have to do _something._ "

"Yes, but do you have to do _everything?_ Go chasing a mirage at the expense of your own family?!"

Her face twists into an ugly grimace. "You don't know me. You weren't there for the last fifteen years."

"You didn't let me know you!"

" _You went to Japan!_ "

Shiro's head is pounding. He walks past his father and opens the door, leaving without a word. They freeze; and then both yell after him.

"Takashi!"

"Takashi, wait!"

He hears running, but he's just passed all his physicals, and they're no match. He gets into his speeder and runs away.

-/-

Adam is crying. He's hiding it, he doesn't make a noise, but he's crying into Shiro's hair, and the hot moisture of his tears soaks into his skin. Shiro feels numb.


	4. The fall and rise of a comet

_part IV: the rise and fall of a comet_

Forty-one cadets are being sworn in this October, on that bright, warm day with clear blue skies over their heads. Forty of them are twenty-five, already with beards and partners and – in some cases – children. Shiro doesn't stand out. He's just as tall as most of them, his shoulders are just as broad, waist just as narrow; the uniform, as well as the army hairstyle with shaved sides, make him look indistinguishable in the long line of cadets. They're all straightened up like taut strings of a harp. Vibrating from nerves and tension and tightly restrained joy. Shiro's gaze is fixed on the horizon, his eyes unseeing.

The thought of the disease will not go away.

How many years from now –

Adam and he read up on the topic until late last night. The onset may happen from early adolescence to adulthood; if his family had this late in life, then he is lucky. He might have another twenty years. Double the life he's had; double the amount of experience. Maybe even more. And then, once it starts affecting him, it's not the end; he just won't be able to be a pilot –

And as he mechanically repeats the pledge of allegiance, watching the admiral descend on them with their new stripes, Shiro understands with perfect clarity that it _will_ be the end. There's no life beyond this left for him. There's no other way. This is what he _is._

He's a pilot. He belongs in that open horizon.

The stripes are being put onto his shoulders. He holds his breath, watching his entire life ease into completion – and then being thrust once more into a completely different, grander, greater world.

"Congratulations, Pilot Shirogane." Admiral Sanda salutes him, just like every other pilot in the row, and his hand is quick and steady as he salutes back. No muscular dystrophy for him just yet. He will go on to achieve so much more than just this.

Iverson follows Sanda, and he gives Shiro an solemn handshake. "Our youngest exploration pilot ever. My compliments to your parents."

"Thank you, sir." Shiro keeps his eyes on the commander. Mother and father are somewhere in that crowd, and the thought of that isn't necessarily jarring; he'd be disappointed if they weren't there. But he's not looking for them. It's a whirlwind of emotions he's not ready to face just yet.

He's got his arms full for the moment.

Sergeant Andrews walks up to him next and shakes his hand with a tight grip. "I'll keep my eye on you, Shirogane."

"Looking forward to it, sir."

The sergeant shakes his head with an irritated expression, but walks away without another comment. Then, finally, the next one to shake his hand is the familiar lanky frame of Sam Holt. The science officer is beaming at him, his left hand coming to rest on Shiro's shoulder; and the joy he radiates is so sincere that Shiro can't help but crack a smile too. "I can't tell you how happy I am for you, Shiro. This actually worked."

"It would've never happened without you, sir. Your recommendation-"

Sam shakes his head. "Someone would have noticed you anyway. Have you ever seen a rising comet, Shiro? It's so bright you can't take your eyes off it. Only an idiot would ignore it."

"And you _are_ the smartest person I know."

"You should meet my daughter, then. Or my son. Maybe you will, actually, they're both interested in the garrison. Speaking of which…" Sam looks around, as if suddenly realising he's standing on the dais, chatting casually and stalling the ceremony. Shiro keeps his face straight, but his eyes sparkle. "We'll catch up later. I have a couple of projects I want to test out, now that I can legally enlist you."

"Anything at all, sir."

"Don't tempt me, Shiro. Now… who's next here?"

He shakes more hands, and returns more congratulatory smiles, but – as always – the words of Sam Holt lodge in his brain tightly and stay there. A rising comet. _He_ is a rising comet.

Calculating the trajectory of rise and fall is natural for his pilot brain. If this is a start – and it is, it _is,_ his stomach is doing something strange when he's staring at the stripes at his shoulders – and if he can count on twenty more years, then he will peak at thirty. Eleven years of rising. Eleven years before the comet loses its impetus and becomes a falling star, inevitably tumbling to oblivion and insignificance and muscle degeneration.

Eleven years until his life is over. And now, with the title of a junior pilot, he's got nothing to lose and everything to gain. Shiro looks up into the endless blue above and imagines the blackness beyond it; no boundaries but those of time and breath and skills. Just him in a white spaceship, soaring into the great unknown, all the way to the edge of the solar system and maybe even further. Eleven years to live.

He's running out of time.

But he's standing still, shoulders straight and eyes up, and the Earth is continuing its slow rolling underneath his feet. On the dais, in the line of the other pilots six years his senior, he's watching the gathered crowds of onlookers as he would a distant forest. He didn't go to Hokkaido this summer; maybe the entire mess with the disease happened just because he's angered the ancestor spirits. Shiro takes a deep breath, and the wind suddenly changes, all the flags and banners of the Galaxy Garrison fluttering in unison. It's blowing from the desert.

A single word appears in his suddenly empty mind.

 _Patience._

Shiro is not religious, and neither is he superstitious. But he shudders head to toe as the wind sweeps over him, and the call for patience resounds in his head with strange, solemn sonority, a voice that sounds like his own thoughts, but doesn't feel like them at all – he's stressed and restless, and he's _running out of time,_ and why would he think about patience? _Why_?

Eleven years.

He has to be smart about it.

Shiro lets go of the heavy breath. And then, for the first time since the beginning of the ceremony, he actually looks at the faces in the crowd. It takes him a while to find two black-haired Asian heads, one with an old-fashioned ponytail, the other cut short for comfort; they both look straight at him, and Shiro nods and gives a tight smile.

He doesn't have time for grudges.

He just doesn't have time.

-/-

He throws himself into the garrison life with wild abandon. In the first six months, he does more test flights than any other pilot sworn in along him; Sam Holt makes him an official assignee to the science department, and he pilots prototypes and robots and things he'd never learnt how to fly. Sam thinks he's an impossibly quick learner: what the scientist does not know is that Shiro stays behind in the night, sneaks into the cadet simulators, and programs himself the news scenarios until he's falling asleep on the control panel. Between that, the murderous physical drills, late shifts, and the ever-increasing amount of flying time, he's only coming back to Adam's – former? – flat to collapse straight on the bed as he stands. He doesn't even notice his twentieth birthday when it comes along. The only thing is that now he has to shave.

He has his eyes on a bigger prize.

"Suborbital flight?" Admiral looks at him with part surprise, part scepticism. "Your pilot is too unexperienced for that, Officer Holt."

"Well, he has to leave the atmosphere at _some_ point, doesn't he? Otherwise he'll stay that way." Sam's face is calm and collected, with no sign of the excitement and stress at that pitch. It could potentially be great. Shiro wishes he had that kind of self-control; he's vibrating with nerves.

"I'm not sending a teenager to space, no matter how good he is. High achiever or not, we usually keep them in the programme for three more years for a _reason._ "

"With all due respect, ma'am," Shiro says, and the admiral looks straight at him. He straightens up mentally. "I logged more hours on deck than any of your other junior pilots. I passed all the tests and requirements for the job. If my age is the only issue, then it should have stopped being one once I was sworn in."

"Pilot Shirogane is absolutely right," says Sam. "The time to throw the birth certificate at him was before he took the oath. It's nothing short of discriminatory _now_."

"I think you're confusing discriminatory with rational." Admiral Sanda purses her lips and looks over the documentation one more time. "How many hours?"

Shiro refuses to smirk. "Three hundred, ma'am."

The admiral's pale eyes stare at him in disbelief. "In the last six months?"

"Aye, ma'am."

"That's… commendable," she allows. Shiro can feel Sam's eyes shooting a quick glance at him, and allows himself to feel hopeful. "Your record is admittedly impressive, Officer. May I inquire about your motivations?"

Shiro closes his eyes for a split second. "I just don't like wasting time, ma'am."

Sanda is scanning his face for any sort of impertinence behind that innocuous statement, but finds none. There is none. Shiro is telling the truth.

Sam clears his throat. "I vouched for this man before, and I would do it again. He'll go on to do great things. The only things he needs is that the people don't actively _stop_ him."

There is a short silence.

"Very well."

Shiro doesn't dare believe his ears.

"But no earlier than in a year's time."

"Admiral-" he tries, but she stops him immediately.

"You need that time to prepare, Officer. Gather your crew and up your zero gravity training. That would still make you the youngest exploration pilot in mankind's history."

Shiro's pupils dilate; the room goes blindingly white. _Full exploration pilot._ That would be… huge. He wasn't expecting that; a full rank would get him even further ahead in the schedule. Go on more space flights. _Stay_ in space, further than just the orbit.Actually run exploration missions.

And he'd still have nine and a half years to go even further.

He gives a short bow in thanks. At his side, Sam is grinning so much it's difficult to believe his face isn't splitting in half. "That's a good decision, Admiral."

"Don't make me regret it, Holt. This is all your responsibility."

"Admiral." Shiro straightens himself up from the bow. "I would bear it myself."

She gives him a curt nod, approval flickering in her pale eyes. "Good. Because it's your life on the line."

Shiro knows. The entire ten and a half years of it.

-/-

The year couldn't pass any slower. And yet Shiro is very aware that every second he spends sulking about it is a second he never gets back. He stills into himself every time his mind gets too overwhelmingly focused on the disease, lying in wait inside his body to claim its strength and speed; the Hokkaido meditation lessons come in so very handy. He doesn't have the time to throw temper tantrums. He needs to focus.

 _Patience._ Who would have thought it's so time-effective?

His routines change, and now he trains with exploration pilots in zero-gravity. They're even older than he's used to, often even ten years his senior, but this kind of difference doesn't bother him any more than it did before. The friendships he forms are not based on age or life experience; they're bonds forged in spars and combat, in sweat and exhaustion and mounting stress. They are deployed in a different training outpost for three months, all across the continent, and Shiro learns the faces and ticks and heartaches of his teammates closer than he had ever known anyone, even Adam.

There's five of them in his immediate squad: him, Sue, Yuan Bing, Jan, and Sebastian, and they spend their days and nights in zero-G chambers. Sue is a tall comms officer from Etiopia, slender, strong and lively; her full name isn't Sue, but Shiro doesn't even attempt to repeat it. (On the first day, he tells her about Alphonse Alighieri-Almundi, and Sue laughs so hard they immediately become best friends.) Yuan Bing and Jan, technicians, are a matched set: one a big blond Slavic man, the other a lanky Singaporean, they worked together on several missions before and seem to catch each other's thoughts without speaking much. Then, Sebastian… Sebastian is a born leader. He's even taller than Shiro, almost two metres of muscle and charisma; at twenty-nine, he'd been in space several times, and speaks about it with a passion that immediately catches Shiro's heart. He commands the ship, and would probably do so easily even if he didn't have the rank; Shiro admires the way he's warm and sober-headed at the same time, and how it takes him less than a day to win all of them over, navigating them through the asteroid belt simulation with a particularly dangerous set of evasive manoeuvres.

For the first time, he's not commanding his own team. And for the first time his natural flying abilities are challenged by someone else's experience; Sebastian admits cheerfully that he isn't even half as talented as Shiro, but ultimately it doesn't matter. He's got nine years of space flight under his belt. He's a better pilot. That's it. Shiro would be annoyed if he weren't so fascinated.

The team dynamic shifts easily around their relationships. Sebastian is unquestionably the leader; Shiro, the co-pilot, is his natural extension and right hand, closely followed by Sue, whose lively animated nature makes her a bridge between them and the technicians. Jan's personality is slightly obsessive, which gets on Shiro's nerves quite a lot; but Sue, a natural social butterfly, manages to dampen it to bearable levels. Yuan Bing is even quieter than Jan, level-headed and decisive. She and Sebastian form a strong bond that comes seemingly out of nowhere to Shiro, until Sue points out that he's not the only one looking up to their leader.

Apparently Sebastian has considerable background in counselling. Shiro is no surprised. But the effectiveness of it gives him pause, and he observes his commander even more keenly.

The army environment is physical. They bump into each other whilst floating through the cabin, hold on to each other's arms and legs, take out stress in angry spars. Shiro gives Jan a black eye once. He's horrified with himself, at least until the Pole swings back at him, and they have a shouting match about colour-coding the flight coordinates while the punches fly wildly in all three axes; they have two days to reach the destination and _Jan just screwed up their entire nav-sys._ Shiro is so angry he can feel it in his mouth. He wants _blood._ He wants-

Sebastian pulls them away from each other with bear-like strength. Their bodies fly gracelessly across the cabin; one to the floor, the other to the ceiling. Shiro crashes his head against the hard surface.

"Lenczewski! Shirogane! What the _hell_ you think you're doing?!"

He scrambles against the ceiling. "I can tell you what we're _not_ doing. We're not flying to the destination, because _someone_ screwed up the coordinates because of _colour-coding!_ "

"I reorganized them, you dunderhead! You keep messing them up!"

"They're coordinates! They're meant to be _used_ -"

"Enough!" Sebastian thunders, and they both fall quiet. "Bing is redoing the system on my orders _._ Jan did the right thing, Shiro."

His head aches from the crash. He feels hot and painful. "Then maybe I should know about this _before_ I crashed us into an asteroid?!"

"Jan." Sebastian's eyes tear away from him and course down to the cabin floor, where Jan is scrambling to regain his balance. "Did you not tell the pilot?"

Silence answers him. Shiro feels the rage rise up in his throat, almost bubbling up, but he forces himself not to shout. He swallows the frustrated yell like a huge, bitter, choking pill.

"Jan," Sebastian says, a tone colder. "Did you or did you not report implementing the change in the system?"

"No," Jan says, a tightly bitten out word. Shiro feels a wave of vengeful satisfaction.

"Maybe you should have."

"Shiro," says Sebastian curtly. "Go back to the cockpit."

He obeys, even though every molecule of him wants to stay and listen to the kind of telling-to Jan is about to receive. But there is no screaming behind closed doors. Sebastian speaks in a low voice, and then walks out too; a glint in his eye tells Shiro that the leader knows exactly what he stalled for.

He watches Yuan Bing working with the cables, and after some time anger quells in him. All that's left after that is shame and embarrassment. That was unworthy of him.

Jan floats back into the cockpit, his black eye spreading prominently beneath his brow. Shiro wordlessly passes him an ice pack. The man looks at him, hesitates, and takes it.

Sebastian nods in approval.

-/-

Just because they're partnered up in the cockpit most of the time, Shiro gets to see a lot of Sebastian. His stories, more than anything else, make him realise how young he actually is. His life has been, and always will be constrained to the military; he doesn't have time for anything else. Sebastian, on the other hand, spent a few years in the civilian fleets before transferring to the Galaxy Garrison, and travelled far and wide; across Africa and Europe, throughout continental Asia, all along the Peruvian Andes. He's got a natural knack for storytelling, cajoling the people to open up, and before he knows it, Shiro confesses to him the fact of his disease. Sebastian nods thoughtfully.

"The way I see it, it doesn't matter now. As long as you take your life bit by bit and make the most of each."

"That's what I'm trying to do."

"Also… no offence, Shiro. But you just seem to live on a faster lane than most. Look at you." Sebastian eyes him up carefully, taking in the sturdy line of his uniformed arms, angular shape of his jaw, the pilot stripes at his shoulder, and Shiro feels warm under those unassuming eyes. "That all in just twenty years? You should take some time just to be proud. Even if you do get out of active service by my age, you'll still be a legend."

Shiro looks back at him, returning the quiet inspection. Sebastian's skin is tanned and scarred, with several bruises just from their training, his broad, lean frame dwarfing even his, his face smooth-shaven and sculpted in straight lines. He doesn't look much older than himself. They're not that different.

A fist in his heart clenches in a short, unexpected burst of pain when he realises that _nine years isn't long._

Sebastian's hand lands on his shoulder, heavy like a mountain. His personality is massive; and now that he's feeling the full weight of his undivided attention, Shiro feels buried under it. It's the first time in his life someone looks at him like that: understanding without pity, strength to meet strength unafraid. "Shiro. This is just the beginning."

His breath hitches, a small embarrassing sound. He's drowning in this unexpected sensation – a feeling of comfort radiating from that hand on his shoulders, warmth and tough and resilient. He's been on the top for so long he's forgotten how it felt to have _help._ To be looked at like that – knowing that his goals were obtainable, and that he didn't have to be alone, and he didn't have to be the leader, that sometimes, someone would be for him what he has always tried to be for others: a ladder.

Sebastian smiles at him, warm and sturdy and real, and Shiro can't take his eyes off that smile.

-/-

"So… Shiro the Hero?" says Sue innocently after lights out. Her bunk is just above his. Shiro turns to his side with a long-suffering sigh, but he's hiding a smile.

"Stop listening to private calls."

"Honey, nothing's private in this capsule. I thought you got the message after you walked in on Jan."

Shiro shudders. The bathroom _had_ been closed. But it also had an old, capricious lock, and sometimes it needed more strength than necessary – but things once seen cannot be unseen. "I'll never be the same."

"I can _hear you,_ " grumbles Jan from the bunk below him, but toothlessly. Shiro can hear Bing chuckling at the very bottom.

"I rest my case," says Sue. "But! _Shiro the Hero._ Come on, spill it. I'll be your cool auntie you can trust."

Shiro hides his face in the pillow. "Christ, Sue, how young do you think I am?"

"Not sure. Ten? Twelve?"

"In which case it's bedtime," says Sebastian from the other side. He's got a bunk for himself – mainly because he's a leader, but also because no-one felt safe sleeping under his massive frame. "We're doing combat simulation tomorrow."

Jan makes a throttled noise. "What? Again? I just finished cleaning the cannon diagnostics!"

"I guess you'll just have to do it again tomorrow," says Sebastian effortlessly, and they all hear a thud as he drops on his bunk. Before Jan manages to throw in any other comment, he adds, "Bing will help you."

That quells Jan's indignation. Shiro wonders if him and the quiet Singaporean have an off-capsule relationship. A crush, perhaps.

Speaking of which…

Sebastian yawns loudly, and Shiro can hear him turning to the side, with his back to the wall. He always sleeps like that. That little detail tells him an entirely too vivid, heartwrenching story about military life. "Goodnight, team."

"Goodnight, Sebastian," says Bing from the lowest bunk, and there's warmth in her deep voice. Shiro closes his eyes.

"Goodnight, Sebastian."

"How about a bedtime story?" says Sue from the top, and everybody groans. "Not mine! Jeez, guys, I won't try again. Though I don't know what was wrong with mine, my daughters like them."

Jan groans. "Sue, I'm thirty one. Next time I see a bedtime story, I'd better be the one reading it."

"Well, it's your fault for getting this far into reproductive age without siring anyone."

"Beg your pardon? Are you implying- I'm perfectly young in _that_ respect, you damn rabbit."

"Nah. _Shiro'_ s young in _that_ respect. The rest of us is theoretically past their biological prime. And there's only oneof us on their second kid, thank you very much."

"Guys," Shiro says at the same time as Sebastian. They all snicker.

"About this hero thing," Shiro continues in a placating voice, hoping to lull the team's mood back into sleepiness. If they're doing combat again tomorrow, they 're going to need their rest. "It's how my… friend calls me. It's spread."

"My meaningful pause friend. Curioser and curioser."

Shiro buries his face back into the pillow. "Sue."

"Well, I, for one, would like to hear that," says Sebastian in a sleepy voice, and Shiro knows his plan has been seen through and approved. He's glad no-one can see his beaming face.

"It all started from my first ship in the academy. She was called Dreamboat…"

Shiro speaks in a soft voice, affectionately recalling the academy days, Dreamboat, Al, Carolina, and Annika, and the auspicious race that sealed the fate of his nickname. And then Adam, who somehow turned it around… and after less than ten minutes he can hear deep, even breaths around him. Jan is snoring softly underneath him. After Shiro is sure everybody is asleep, he trails off, smiling fondly into the darkness of his bunk.

"Good job, Shiro," says Sebastian in a low whisper, and something joyful flutters in his chest.

-/-

They go to space.

It's February the 29th. Shiro has a sneaking feeling that Sam Holt organised it that way on purpose; he wouldn't put it past the man to move a huge global-scale enterprise just to give him a twenty first birthday present. They are back at the desert, him, Sue, Jan, Yuan Bing and Sebastian; and they're wearing new suits, grey and orange of the Galaxy Garrison. They're standing in front of the huge hangar that would open any second now, revealing their new ship. His first extra-atmospheric ship.

Shiro knows there are cameras around him. He forces himself to look calm and collected, but a hurricane of emotions wreaks havoc inside him.

Finally, the hangar door rises, shrugging off the desert dust. It goes up torturously slowly, and Shiro is staring into the darkness with the eyes so intent and focused his vision narrows. A memory whispers _patience_ in his thoughts, weaving the strange emotional patterns into his stress-clouded mind;he bats it away. He's had enough of patience. He wants to _see the ship._

But then the curtain on his life finally rises, and for a split second he thinks he's just imagining things in that deep darkness of the hangar–

It's white.

It's blindingly white.

And at the side of it, in big black block lettering, he can see the name that makes his entire body shudder viscerally: _GGV Comet._

"Go for it, Shiro," says Sebastian at his side. "It's yours. I'm glad to be your co-pilot."

The light hits the Comet, and it's so brilliant, so bright in its breathtaking silver shine, that he doesn't even realise when he approaches her and lays a shivering hand on her white nose, doesn't see the camera flashes around him in a rain of flickering light, doesn't see the tears that pour through his vision and splinter the world into a thousand little spaceships, each one a little paper plane fluttering through the vast empty space.


	5. Peace and love on planet Earth

_part V: peace and love on the planet Earth_

When they come back, Shiro is kicked out of the garrison.

"It's for your own good," says Iverson with his arms crossed gravely on his chest. He's flanked by Sam Holt on one side and Sebastian on the other, and Shiro could argue, but there's really no point.

By now, he's just doing it to keep up the pretences. "I'm not tired."

"You just spent a week in space. Look at you! You're exhausted."

Shiro looks down at his hands. They're still and steady. "My medical went fine. I appreciate that you're worried, but-"

"Ugh! This is pointless." Iverson huffs and makes an impatient gesture. "Officer Nadal, take this man and get him back to his house. He's banned from the garrison grounds for two weeks. At least."

Sebastian nods solemnly. "Yup."

Shiro contemplates reminding them that he's not their child, but then realises the internal contradiction that would entail, and keeps silent. Instead, he looks at Sam, trying to convey the depth of injustice meeting him at the hands of authority – and is met with a slightly amused decisive glance. "You earned your rest, Shiro. Meanwhile, we'll try to contain the media fallout."

Ah yes. The media. That's one part of it all he did not consider. Apparently you could not be the youngest exploration pilot in global history and escape unscathed. The first pictures of him with the Comet, his hands and forehead leaning against the bow in a reverent manner, have already been published all the way from local newspaper to Tokyo Times. Shiro feels strange with all that attention.

But he has to admit: it's a good picture. His black hair against her silvery white shine makes for a striking contrast, and his face is stilled in an intensely awed, _happy_ expression. And for all the reasons people gain fame, he supposes there are worse ways to get on the newspaper cover than cuddling a spaceship.

He feels a deep shudder just thinking about her. It's a strong, possessive, steady feeling, not unlike in the moments when he was the team leader of Dreamboat and they crossed the finish line first, with the second ship far behind them; but stronger, more raw, as if somehow the wires of the spaceship were connected to his own nerves. He _controls_ it. It's his to guide. And as they brought her up into orbit, Shiro guided her into space -

He aches to go back.

Sebastian walks up to him, tugging at his shoulder. "Come on, Shiro. Let's get you home."

"And stay out!" adds Sam behind them, and as much as Shiro is frustrated at their insistence, he can't be mad at them.

He follows Sebastian out through the gate and to the car park, their army boots kicking up the red dust; he half expects a speeder, but is absolutely not surprised when Sebastian's ride turns out to be a huge two-person Harley Davidson. The black motorcycle is clearly beloved, polished to a glint despite its obvious age. Sebastian gets on and puts the coordinates of his home address into his phone; then he glances at Shiro, pointing with his chin at the back.

Shiro puts the helmet on his head and gets on behind him. The motorcycle is big and comfortable, but unfortunately for them, Sebastian is also big; between the two of them, neither particularly lanky, Shiro's only choice is to straddle his commanding officer. He does so with as much dignity as he can muster. It wouldn't have been this strange – they shared more constrained spaces in the training capsule, and then on board of the Comet, and there has been enough physical contact between that one ride is nothing weird – but it's the first time Shiro sees Sebastian in civilian context, in the streets. And – and it's more difficult than he expects to stop leaning into him, his chest curving out of his own accord to mould itself against Sebastian's spine.

He notices. Of course he notices. Sebastian turns his head back, yelling over the wind, "Feeling cuddly, Shiro?!"

"Just soaking up the warmth of your leadership!" he yells back, the swishing air masking his embarrassment, and Sebastian's shoulders shake against his with an earnest laughter. Shiro holds on tighter, and his smile grows more genuine. "I'm gonna miss you, Sebastian!"

"Don't make me cry, I'm driving!"

"I mean it!"

"I know!"

They speed through the city, yelling at each other through the helmets and wind, and heads are turning to stare at them incredulously, but Shiro couldn't care less. He's holding on, and there's a warm body in between his thighs, and he's just twenty-one and just had the best week of his life, piloting the Comet through the vastness of space, watching the Earth from afar, feeling so fiercely protective of every living being on their bright little blue planet. He's feeling his own exhaustion waiting for him on the inner side of his eyelids, but he keeps them wide open, beyond its reach. He's young. He's full of joy. He's holding on to Sebastian, and Sebastian said _this was just the beginning._

He's not alone. Finally, _finally_ he's not alone.

They stop at his flat, and Shiro gets off nimbly, shrugging off the helmet. Sebastian watches him with a glint in his eyes.

"You heard the science officer. Stay out."

"Two weeks and not a day longer."

"Take care of yourself, Shiro. What you did out there? That's something to be proud of. Just make sure you give yourself time for that pride."

The thought of the disease stirs in his mind, but the joy keeps it at bay. "I will." He pauses. "For now."

Sebastian gives a short bark of laugher. "That thing, right here. It's called: relentless. Take care, kid."

He makes a move to turn the engine on again, but Shiro is not ready to let him out of his life.

"Do you want to come up for a drink?"

Sebastian looks at him curiously, and again he is buried under the immense weight of those kind, intelligent eyes; but he refuses to hide. He lets Sebastian draw whatever conclusions he wants from his tight embrace during the drive, his burning cheeks, his _I'm gonna miss you._ Shiro might be nine years younger, but he is no child. And he is most definitely not shy about what he wants.

Even when he's not sure what exactly it is, but it involves Sebastian. Lots and lots of Sebastian.

"Sure."

Shiro's brain goes limp with relief. He observes silently as Sebastian is parking the motorcycle with quick, efficient movements; there is not one gesture too much. For a man that size, he's gentle with his hands, as if he'd been careless one time too many and shattered something precious. Shiro realises that for all his travel stories, he actually doesn't know much about Sebastian himself.

But he must have his reasons to indulge his protégé; counselling reasons, or military, or personal. There must be something. Shiro can't see though it just yet, but there _is._

They go up the stairs, and only in the pristine white of the stairwell walls does Shiro notice the wear and tear of their uniforms. They said that _he_ 'd been exhausted, but Sebastian came out of the same mission. Shiro decides to make coffee first, with Adam's superb express; then alcohol. The key turns in the lock without a noise, and they walk into the dark flat, Shiro absent-mindedly flipping the switch –

The flat is decorated. There are flowers and plane-shaped balloons everywhere. Even a bottle of champagne in a sweaty bucket at the counter. And in the middle of it all, Adam stands with kitchen gloves, holding a silver-white cake in the shape of a rocket, a beaming smile slowly dripping off his face as he takes in Shiro and Sebastian.

Shiro freezes.

They stare at each other for a few excruciatingly long seconds, and he just can't find words.

"Hi, Shiro," says Adam through lips clenched white, in a voice that's barely more than a hoary whisper.

Shiro moves forward in a desperate bid to salvage the situation, keenly aware that Sebastian's eyes are heavy on his back; he comes close to Adam, leans over the cake, and, one hand on cheek, grazes his lips against Adam's tight unsmiling mouth. "Hi, Adam."

His friend-lover-landlord- _partner_ makes not even a pretence of reciprocity.

Sebastian clears his throat. "Looks like I'm crashing your welcome party. I'll be on my way."

"Adam, that's'- that's my commanding officer for the last mission, Sebastian Nadal. Sebastian, that's Adam Warden, my _partner_. He's a cadet at the garrison."

"Pleased to meet you, Adam," Sebastian says in a neutral voice. Shiro could scream at the sense of _wrongness_ and _awfulness_ in the air, like he was suddenly reliving a nightmare he's long forgotten about. Adam's face shifts imperceptibly; he gives a curt nod.

"Likewise, sir."

"Well, I'll leave you to your celebrations." The words ring hollow, but Sebastian somehow manages to give them a whiff of life. "I'm sure I'll see you two around. Take care, Shiro."

Shiro nods, and the quiet click of the door confirms to him that Sebastian had just left his life. He listens to the steps of the heavy army boots behind the door, sounding lower and lower still, until there's nothing more than an echo, a memory, dispelled by the distant sound of a motorcycle engine starting up.

Adam takes the cake back to the counter and puts it there. Then he takes off the kitchen gloves, placing them one over the other in the lowest drawer of the cabinet; Shiro's eyes follow him keenly in deafening silence. Then, all tasks completed, all energy spent, Adam violently slams his fist into the counter and just falls down with it, face-first, in between the champagne bucket and the cake.

Shiro reaches out for words, but there are none.

"I waited," Adam whispers throatily. "I fucking waited for two hours."

"He's my commanding-"

"I have _eyes,_ Shiro. And a brain. You went on and on about him for _months_."

Shiro swallows his guilt down like a spoonful of burning acid. "I'm-"

"If you say you're sorry, I'm gonna ram this cake into your face."

This should be funny. This should not be as viscerally full of grief and rage as it comes out.

"Adam…" He waits to be interrupted again, but Adam's face is buried in the counter, shielded tightly by his quivering hands, and he doesn't speak. Shiro's voice gives out. There is nothing for him to say.

He notices, almost beside himself, that the rocket-cake is decorated with liquorice. His favourite.

"But you did nothing wrong, did you?" Adam's voice is so bitter and tight-strung that Shiro recoils at the emotion. "It's not cheating if we're just friends."

"We're not-"

"I don't know what we are, Shiro. What the fuck _are_ we? Do _you_ have any idea? Of course you do, you're always five steps ahead. So tell me… " His fingers clench spasmodically over his head. "Just… please, Christ, fuck, just tell me. I can't stand this anymore!"

He stands up so violently that the bar stool crashes on the floor. His glasses are foggy with tears and his own clutched breath. "I love you, Shiro. You can go away for months on end and I never get you out of my mind, and every single time I promise myself I won't call anymore, I break it, because you know what? I want to _hear you_ more than I want my _dignity._ "

Shiro watches him with eyes wide open. Adam's speaking fast, breathing unevenly, red flush on his cheeks. "I love you even though you win all those stupid fucking spars, and don't even realise how melodramatic you are, and how hard you work yourself into the ground, and how you always want to save the world and everybody in it, you fucking idiot! And with all those men _and_ women ogling you all the time, this nightmare scenario right now is all I can think about… and _I. Am. Still. Right. Here._ Still waiting. Still clinging on. Because having you _sometimes_ is still better than not having you at all."

Shiro reaches out for his arm mutely, but Adam wrenches it away. Then, a split second later, his trembling hand is back on Shiro's, snatching back his wrist, putting the open palm back on his skin. His gestures are frenetic, jerky, propelled by some wild energy. "You can touch me if you want. You can have all of me. You already _have_ all of me. But I want you whole too. And I want you _for myself._ "

Shiro closes his arms around him almost forcibly, pressing Adam's face into his chest. "Adam. You need to calm down."

Adam laughs at that, a pathetic heartwrenching sound. "Calm down, he says. You're afraid I'll pull you down with me if I trash too much?"

Shiro tightens his grip on him. "You're not drowning."

"I can't do this friendship thing. I thought I could, but I can't."

"Adam-"

"I love you," he repeats bluntly, stubbornly, and Shiro feels the echo of it vibrate in his ribcage. "You either learn to live with it, or tell me to go right now. You can keep the flat. But I can't be just your _friend._ "

"Adam!" Shiro shakes him physically. The man is limp in his arms. "Let's just… talk about it."

Adam lets go a long, exhausted breath, the toxin of a kept secret leaving his body after who knows how long. "I've done my part of talking."

Shiro releases him. Adam steps back; just a step between them both. Just a length of one decision.

"I'm sorry."

Adam looks at him, and then back at the counter. He silently picks up the cake. Up close, Shiro can see that the little liquorice decorations at the rig are meticulously designed to look like little 21's.

Then the cake-rocket crashes on his face.

He can't see for a moment. The wet, slick, sweet sludge splashes on his hair, shoulders, all over his chest. It soaks through his uniform in a second, and he can feel the still-persisting warmth of the inner layer. Some of the splash gets into his ears.

He stands there, not making a move to clean himself up or wipe the cake off his eyes. He can hear Adam's frantic breath, the only noise in the dead silent flat.

Then he licks his lips. There's liquorice on them.

"That's my favourite."

Adam snorts.

It is not entirely devoid of humour.

Shiro reaches out blindly until his fingers find a warm body to grasp at. He pulls Adam back into an embrace, smearing the cake on his clothes and hair. The man doesn't protest. "I don't want you as a friend."

Adam shivers in his arms, burying his face in Shiro's cake-covered chest. "What do you want me as, Shiro?"

Shiro hesitates.

He thinks about Al and Carolina. Then Sue, Jan, Bing, and… and Sebastian. He loves them. He loves them because his heart has long had the form of a spaceship, and he can fit as many as humanly possible in there. And – he feels a dull pang at his chest when he thinks about the starting motorcycle engine –

They leave, one by one.

But there had been one person in his life that hasn't, as if a glimmering thread ran between them, one that could not be lost or broken. A piece of rope holding his life together, childhood to garrison to adulthood. Even though he doesn't deserve it. _Especially_ when he doesn't deserve it.

Shiro faces his failure head-on, refusing to run away from it. "I knew for some time it was bothering you."

"Then why didn't you say anything?" Adam's voice is hollow, tired.

"I… should have."

"You think?" There is no bite in that remark, just empty shell in place of a provocation.

Shiro thinks about the Comet, standing in the hangar in the garrison, beyond his reach now. Nine and a half years left. "Adam, I… I have an incurable disease. I don't have time for your typical relationship. And I will be in deployment a lot. Or in space. Do you think you still want to be my boyfriend?"

Adam stills at that question. Then he shivers head to toe; the shudder reaches Shiro through the thick layer of uniform and cake. "Yes. Oh yes. God, yes."

"So I guess that's settled now."

"One more thing." Adam's fist closes on the edge of his uniform. He still can't see through the cake in his eyes.

"Yes?"

"We're _exclusive._ "

Shiro bends down, searching for Adam's head. To his surprise, he finds his lips. The kiss is sweet, wet, and sludgy; it smells of liquorice.

"Exclusive," he confirms.

"And it only took nine years. You idiot. You absolute fucking idiot."

Shiro doesn't argue. He scrapes the baked goods off his eyes and watches Adam smile giddily, still shaky from relief. Guilt settles in his stomach, heavy and sickly sweet like the cake; but beyond that, there is a familiar steady feeling of a decision being made. Of a course change.

He presses Adam close. "Lucky we have champagne."

-/-

Shiro wakes up at dawn, alone.

The realisation reaches him like a whiff of the coming storm, the imperceptible quivering of air that makes him shiver with the coldness of it. The chill gradually gains intensity as he takes in his circumstances: bare walls, curtainless windows, uncluttered shelves with a generic cactus sitting on the top. The room is empty, white, surgically clean. He's lived here for a year and a half and there's nothing around him suggesting this space is inhabited.

And Adam's gone. The other side of the bed is neatly done and spotless.

Shiro clenches his eyes shut. Their darkness reminds him of space; a comforting, all-encompassing weightless blanket, vast and endless and open, with the voices of the team buzzing in the comms idly as he traverses the void. But it's just a memory, this time; he's stuck. He feels heavy with actual Earth-gravity weight, and maybe that's the reason his heart sinks so deeply into his ribcage it almost feels like it rests against his spine. It's pressing him tight into the covers with a cold, sharp feeling of loss.

He'd spent so little time worrying about this that he's not prepared to lose him.

As he lies there in the darkness of his own mind, trying to come to terms with this new reality that has a gaping hole in the middle of it, trying to process his sudden loneliness – it's the first time he's alone in months, with no voices and no physical body to bump into and touch and reach out for – trying to understand the shame and self-directed anger that flare up unexpectedly, closing up his throat in fruitless rage, because _he_ is the one to blame for this, no-one else but him, him and the disease, and his all-consuming dream that lays waste to everything else, because _he just never has the time, nine and a half years_ – he hears a quiet rustle in the kitchen.

He's on his feet before he realises it. He crosses the distance between the bedroom and the kitchen with the heart in his throat, panic spiking up unexpectedly –

Adam is mopping the floor. The pathetic reminders of his welcome cake are already in the bin, the smell of freshly ground coffee in the air. Shiro halts at the door, one hand resting on its frame because he suddenly needs something to lean against.

The relief is overwhelming, like a sudden jump to zero-G.

Adam looks up to eye him. "Shiro? What's wrong?"

He shakes his head. There are no words in his military-sculpted vocabulary to describe this.

Adam pauses the mopping for a moment. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

"I…" His throat is so tight it's hard to even say it, but he forces the sound through, forces himself to hear this previously-inconceivable reality. "I thought you left."

Adam's thin lips twitch humourlessly. They stare at each other across the length of the room. _Adam, this is my commanding officer, Sebastian Nadal…_

"No," says Adam finally, something bitter and cynical glinting in his eyes. "Not yet."


	6. So much more left to share

_part VI: so much more left to share_

On the same day Shiro's vacation begins, Adam receives a call from Iverson. The commander brusquely informs him that he has been granted a two-week leave from the academy – for no apparent reason at all. From his oblique comments, Shiro understands that the issue was presented to the commander as the matter of his own mental health. There's only one person Shiro can track this to.

Sebastian has counselling background. And – clearly – there was something he'd seen in Shiro that warranted his quiet help behind the scenes. He spends several hours trying to unravel the tight knot this ties in his stomach. In the end, it's fruitless; so he just leaves it simmer in there, a dull ache of an unspent opportunity.

 _Patience._ He doesn't know why the strange his-not-his voice keeps coming to his thoughts like a returning childhood refrain, but he follows it. He doesn't fight the melancholy, nor the churning guilt that comes with it every time he looks at Adam. They don't quite stagnate in time. But then, carried by the currents of the emotions, he knocks against a rock of an unquestionable truth: he trusts his commanding officer.

Sebastian removed himself for a reason. The least Shiro can do is make the most of the opportunity that affords him.

So they go to Japan. Shiro insists on paying for the last-minute flights himself; they're not cheap, but the convenient truth is that he barely touched any of his paycheques for the last one and a half year, and he does owe Adam more than just a _trip_. It's strange to be a passenger on a plane, even more so on a big commercial flight; it's stranger still to be recognised by people, and he ends up signing several photos before Adam's well-placed acerbic comments make his newfound fans go away.

The flight passes in peace. He sleeps through most of it, more soundly than in his bed at home, lulled by the familiar buzz of engines and white noise of aimless chatter; the exhaustion finally claims him. Adam doesn't seem to mind. He's doing his own thing; in the short moment of wakefulness Shiro learns that his _boyfriend_ has brought books along, and catches up on the material he'll have missed by the end of the fortnight. They exchange a couple of snide remarks about the snail-like cruising speed of their plane, and Shiro chuckles before falling back into pitch-black slumber.

But the actual gift he needs to give Adam is not the trip, it's his own time _._ And Sebastian had made sure he'd be able to. So – Shiro is trying to do just that.

It astounds him how easily it comes to him. Last year had put some distance in between them, but time hasn't stopped for everybody else when Shiro was chasing his rank; and Shiro finds himself reacting with curiosity to this new, older, more experienced Adam. He's now in the fighter pilot stream as well, and has its own team now, inhabiting the board of _GGV Minx;_ he sourly remarks on how the Galaxy Garrison seems bent on giving sexy names to every fighter ship in their possession. What he lacks in the kind of innate talent Shiro possesses, he makes up with a clear, sober-headed, technical approach, less interested in the pragmatics of flight and more in the applied theory behind it. That fascination is something Shiro never really considered; for him, the passion lies in exploration, with everything else the simple means to it. But Adam's insights are novel, and the depth of them makes Shiro realise that his shortened education was not without a cost – and that losing three years of flight school made him perhaps less inquisitive than his academically-minded companion.

It's intriguing. It's a challenge he did not see coming.

So they talk. They talk away the second flight from Tokyo to Hokkaido, and then from the airport to the countryside, discovering each other with an odd mixture of freshness and familiarity. Adam shares the anecdotes from the Team Minx, and that digs out Shiro's vivid memories of Team Dreamboat; they mock Sergeant Andrews together, and Shiro isn't very proud of the snide satisfaction he feels when Adam describes Andrews' indignant reaction to his space expedition. He finds out that Annika does indeed fly with Al and Carolina now, and they are consistently in the top three of the year; and the cargo pilot that would have replaced her, had Shiro not intervened, now pilots her old fighter with Daria and Sven. Shiro feels warm finding this out. Life goes on; and even though he's chasing his own dreams, and his disease is chasing _him,_ the lives he's touched on his way are all the better for it.

(He wonders about Sebastian, and whether _he_ felt the same letting go of _Shiro_ , but drops that train of thought before Adam manages to notice the sudden quietness coming over him.)

They arrive at his father's empty summer house, cold and fresh with the biting winds of spring; and they sit outside on a wide terrace over a familiar breathtaking mountain view. The sloping valley is splayed beneath them like a giant meteoric crater; dark green of pine trees and flickering white of snow, still laying in little creases of the terrain, outline the jagged line of the mountain peaks surrounding the basin. It's a vast, empty canvass of nature's wild glory, and the little wooden house behind them is just a pin tucked inside it. Adam is silent for a long moment after seeing the view; Shiro waits for a comment about a clichéd zen or shaolin training, but it doesn't come.

"This is where you spent every summer?" says Adam finally, his voice uncharacteristically quiet. Shiro nods quietly.

Adam's eyes are focused in the airy depths in front of them. "I guess a lot of things about you makes sense now."

Shiro doesn't know what to say. He's always known those peaks; they're a part of him just as much as the tuft of black hair on his forehead, or his steady pilot hands. But as he stares into them now, he sees them as if through Adam's eyes: a new, unreachable horizon, divided from him by the vastness of empty space, a distant goal he's always held before him like a faraway promise.

It suddenly strikes him that it wasn't _only_ his mother's fault that he's become a pilot.

They sit down on the bare wood of the terrace, sharing a blanket against the biting cold, and when Adam kisses him, he allows himself not to think about it, not to worry, not to count the passing seconds, just feel.

The next morning, they go down to a little forest shrine, a familiar faded red arch marching a sacred place. Shiro hesitates, and then puts his most prized possession at the feet of the little statue: a random piece of space rubble that had lodged itself into the Comet's airlock, a twisted bit of silvery wire no bigger than his thumb.

"I'm sorry I didn't come sooner," he says quietly in Japanese, and the wind swirls around him, life-bringing and bone-chilling cold. Adam stands behind him; he can feel his eyes on his hands.

"Can I-" Adam clears his throat. "Would your mountain spirits be happy with just half of that?"

Shiro throws him a questioning glance, but Adam's face is unreadable. "I don't think they'd mind."

"Thanks." He drops on one knee before the statue, and twists one side of the metal wire until comes loose; then he takes out a lighter from his jacket pocket and melts it apart. Shiro raises his eyebrows at him.

"Since when do you s-"

"I had to cope with the stress somehow," says Adam curtly, not looking up to him. Shiro has it on the tip of the tongue that the clean, tidy, precise Adam should know best that smoking is a terrible toxic habit – but then he considers why his boyfriend would have been _under stress_ in the last months, and he feels like his own throat is blocked with toxic gas.

He doesn't scold him.

He hasn't just left a trail of happier people in his wake. His mistakes have had consequences all the same.

Adam pockets the smaller part of the wire and stands up. He makes a small, awkward bow at the statue, his hands clutching at his chest; Shiro walks up to him and gently tugs his arms down along his chest in a more accurate Japanese fashion. They bow to the deity together – and Shiro imbues it with a small, shy, unspoken prayer for forgiveness, for mercy in the face of hurt, so that the same patience he seeks could also be granted to him.

They rest. Shiro spends his every morning meditating at the terrace. At the beginning Adam joins him; then, after several days, he gives up and just brings out a book. Every once in a while, an ambient comment about velocities, trajectories, and flight navigation testing draws Shiro out of the blankness of meditation; and sometimes he follows that thread just to see how animated Adam gets about it. They present two starkly different approaches, that of a pragmatic utility versus that of an academic rigour. They clash just as surely as their bodies when they spar, and just as violently; Shiro finds a new kind of thrill in it.

"You know," he interrupts Adam's ranting one morning, and the man casts him an irritated glance, "I spent the last year with people with the same kind of purpose as mine."

"Is that your way of saying you're not used to people boring you to death? Very subtle, Shiro."

He chuckles. "No. The opposite. I've missed people with different horizons."

Adam considers that. "Our horizons _are_ very different."

"I'm trying to say I like it."

"Oh." Adam quiets for a moment. "I do, too." He looks so unsure of himself for a second that Shiro's heart melts; then he turns the page, covering the embarrassment with focus. But he's wearing a little smile now.

He's no Sebastian. Shiro admits that thought into his head along with the burning shame of it. But perhaps he doesn't have to be.

Perhaps Shiro can love him as Adam.

-/-

They skirt around that conversation as long as they can, so long that Shiro starts hoping it'll drift away on its own. They're climbing a mountain he used to scale with his father in early childhood, approaching the little volcanic lake, and he tells Adam about the zero-G training, about the five-person crew in the capsule that could very easily feel like a crowd, about his fisticuffs with Jan and easy friendship with Sue. About his pride, his love at first sight, his gliding silver-white vessel of dreams, the Comet. And as he's drawn back into the memory, his thoughts drift away, and he slips.

"Sebastian let me pilot her start. Her maiden journey. I was the first to ever fly her, Adam, I'll never forget that-"

Then his ears catch up.

Adam looks away.

The shame is familiar now, but it doesn't get easier.

They climb in silence. To his surprise, Adam is the one to break it. "He's important to you."

"You're important to me too."

It's the truth, but it sounds defensive even to his own ears. Shiro waits for Adam to call him out on that, like he would on any other nonsense, but Adam doesn't say anything for a long moment. And when he finally does, it's not what Shiro expects. "Would you like to be here with him instead?"

 _Yes,_ whispers something deep in Shiro's mind, but he sets it aside. "He wouldn't have come."

"That's not an answer." Adam's voice is flat.

"Adam, I…" There must be some version of truth that doesn't hurt. But Shiro isn't seeing it. "I was chasing something I couldn't have. I wanted it. But I had to let go eventually."

Adam's lips move soundlessly, repeating his last words. Shiro spots the double-edged blade too late. "I didn't mean-"

"That's alright," Adam says, a familiar bitter note in his voice. "You're a better man than I am. You can actually let go when it's hopeless. I can't."

Shiro clenches his fists in shame and frustration. "Adam. We're not hopeless."

"It really doesn't matter, Shiro."

Helpless rage rises in his throat. And suddenly a mad plan forms itself in his mind, and he picks up his pace, passing Adam over in a narrow mountain path; they're at the cliff overseeing the little lake. He climbs down swiftly and, before Adam knows what he'd done, disappears from his sight. He's two metres down, staring at the sharp, porous black rock at the bottom of the lake. He's had the time to get to know it after the first failed dive.

Adam gets to the edge of the cliff and looks down in alarm. "What the hell are you doing?"

A memory flashes in his head, entirely too clear. "Jump."

"Are you nuts?! This is basalt rock! I don't even know how deep this is! You might not care, but I'm gonna need that spine for later-"

"Just trust me," he cuts him off, and he hears the sharp military command in his own voice. "Jump."

"You _are_ nuts." Adam's voice is flat with disbelief. Shiro is sincerely sick of this, and of himself, and of the fact that he can't restore a trust he doesn't deserve, a trust he's broken, and that he can't make Adam believe any promises he gives because even in his own mind they don't make sense. But Shiro _knows_ what he wants. And right now he wants Adam to believe him.

"Do you love me?"

"Is this some kind of trust exercise?"

"Answer the question, Adam."

Adam doesn't hesitate. "Yes. But I'm still not jumping."

 _Patience._

Shiro takes a deep breath. "Please."

"Why? What is it- what exactly are you trying to accomplish here, Shiro? I don't... why?" Adam trails off. Shiro closes his eyes, and he's standing at the edge of the lake in deafening silence, the wind quiet around him, but a hurricane of thought in his mind, and the same alien, strange presence that is both him and not him weaves itself back into his thoughts, and Shiro _knows_ he should be patient, he _is_ patient, he will be –

But the breath of wind he feels inside his mind says something else.

 _Focus._

His thoughts narrow to a single point.

And he can hear the swishing of air, the small noise the earth makes when it lets go of a tall lanky body two metres above him, when the body cuts through the empty space in freefall, inches away from the surface, and – _focus – –_

Shiro catches him.

They tumble to the sharp lake bottom through the icy water, and his impetus knocks them over to safety, away from the rocks that had cut open his father's body all those years ago, into that one, single, smooth and polished deep well in the deadly black basalt.

He'll find a way.

He _will_ find a way.

Adam's gasping for air as they return to the surface, and he's coughing and snorting breathlessly as he's clinging to Shiro's chest. "And what the hell was _that_ supposed to do?!"

"I don't know if I love you," says Shiro, quickly and anxiously, pressing him tight to his own chest, the bubbling truth coming to the surface like his own breath. "But I'll protect you with my life. I promise. I'll keep us both safe."

Adam stares at him.

"… Have I ever said melodramatic?"

"Adam." Shiro smiles, a broad, genuine smile, when he realises something else. "You jumped."

The answer comes in less than a whisper. "I still trust you."

Shiro kisses him, the icy water and mineral, volcanic tinge, and the full bitterness of everything he's done and everything he doesn't deserve, and the breathtaking, unearned, _unearnable_ gift of new beginnings being offered to a man running out of time, all between the two pairs of blueing-cold lips.

-/-

They don't make a fuss out of it when they go back after their two weeks. Adam just brings his stuff back to the flat, and just like that, they live together now. It's easy. It's nothing special.

Except the ticking clock of the bomb on his back slows down exactly fifty percent. A realisation comes to him, one night, when he lays awake with Adam's body wrapped tightly into his, that the time spent with others isn't shared, or divided, or lessened.

It's added up.

Not nine and a half anymore.

 _Nineteen._

And even when it shrinks to eighteen, it doesn't terrify him like it used to. Not when he's waking up to a smell of freshly ground coffee each day. He's sharp; he's focused. Even if he doesn't have much in terms of time, now it can multiply.

(He wonders if this was what Sebastian was trying to tell him.)

The idea of him _teaching_ comes from Adam's off-handed comment, after yet another shopping trip disrupted by autograph hunters. This time, the assaulters are young pre-teens, and Adam cynically suggests a way to make space less enticing: make it a school assignment. The idea makes him chuckle at first – making space boring never worked for him – but then it takes root, and between his flights and training and testing Sam's prototypes Shiro takes it to Iverson.

First it's the cadets before their stream-choice, sixteen to twenty. Their faces express a mixture of scepticism and admiration, and Shiro takes particular pleasure in turning the scepticism into full-blown awe as he talks about his trip to space. Commanding a room isn't too different than commanding a spaceship; and Shiro learnt from the best. His natural soft-spoken attitude comes in handy, easing the sharp edges of the more learned commanding presence; soon he instinctively begins to notice when to keep the discipline tight, and when to let up with a winning smile. The classes are a success; and when he experimentally organises a tour of the Comet, he's faced with such a thundering of volunteers that he's actually slightly intimidated. Adam just rolls his eyes and tells him to get a secretary for fan mail.

Then, it's the prep year – the precarious age of fifteen, teens working their hardest to pass the garrison exams and enter the main academy. He knows better how to do it now, and offers the tour of the Comet for those getting the highest marks in practical tasks of pilotage. Adam puts the impromptu exams together in his spare time, basing it off his own classes and tests, and they run in in the simulator: there's an immense satisfaction in watching the teens compete excitedly to remotely change the fuel tank, knocking each other over to stare at others engaging the simulator screens. He takes eight of them to visit the Comet; him, the pilot, then two 'co-pilots', four 'engineers', and two 'comms officers'. One of his newly recruited engineers looks familiar; but Shiro needs to actually listen to his excited chatter to actually place him.

"Your name is Matt, right?"

The teen nods vigorously. "Max Holt, sir. Garrison prep. Permission to speak, sir!"

Shiro wants to laugh out loud at that, but the seriousness of the boy's face stops him. Instead, he nods gravely. "Granted, cadet."

Matt goes pink with pride at the much-desired rank. "I have a question, sir! There's plenty of dead satellite junk in space, is that right? The Comet has brought back some? Do you think it's plausible we'll be able to recycle that into working ship parts? We could do repairs in space! Sir!"

Shiro does his best to keep a straight face. "I think you need to ask your dad about that."

"He says that's a good idea, sir! We should just invest into more comprehensive recycling facilities onboard!"

"That's an _excellent_ idea, cadet Holt," says Shiro seriously, and the kid almost jumps off the ground at the compliment. "You should submit the proposal to the research and funding committee."

"I will! Sir!"

That last, overly enthusiastic _sir_ has him chuckling all the way home. He tells Adam the story, and they both have a laugh; but after a while Adam's brain starts to churn out practical issues with onboard recycling faster than Shiro can process them, and he leaves his nerd boyfriend be. He's got his own obsessions to further. He's still flying, and still working with Sam; his life has settled into a comfortable busy rhythm, punctuated by training sessions and meetings with kids. There is talk about the next exploration mission, but for the moment, Shiro is satisfied letting it simmer in the conference rooms and government liaisons' offices; he is aware of his own position within the garrison, and he can be comfortably confident that once the mission was planned out in detail, he would not be overlooked. As long as his life has purpose, and that it has focus, Shiro is content to be patient.

In the meantime, the garrison mounts an outreach programme in local schools - and Exploration Pilot Takashi "Shiro" Shirogane becomes the face of it. The kids are even younger now, barely fourteen; seven years' difference, but he's been spending most of his time with much older people. Even as he sees himself in the reflection at the classroom window, he barely sees a _boy_ anymore; what looks back at him is a reflection of a young officer of an unspecified age, shoulders broad and stripe-adorned, with a kind knowing smile and gentle eyes. He could be his own mentor, thinks Shiro with a whiff of melancholy.

It's a fairly repetitive process, at least at the start. The name, the title, the generic introduction from the teacher. What's always new is the kids. Shiro is perpetually fascinated by each all-new collection of faces in front of him; every time, he's trying to get a feel of the classroom as he hears Mrs. Such and Such go over the well-worn phrases about Takashi Shirogane Who've Been to Space. Who's the strongest personality in the room? Who's the brightest? Who's the outcast?

And it just so happens that one day, all those questions are answered by one kid. The only one so far that, in his short teaching career, consistently refused to get excited about either space, big machines, or video games. Shiro's gaze lingers on the kid curiously; he's got an air of silence around him, as if nothing got either in or out of the buffer zone he wears around himself like a protective jacket. No words in, no words out. His black hair is overgrown, obscuring half his face.

He doesn't want to get into the simulator, but does it anyway when put under pressure; and then, to Shiro's only partial surprise, he proceeds to score much, much higher than the high achievers appointed by Mrs. Such and Such. The talent is raw, obvious, radiant. _Have you ever seen a rising comet, Shiro? It's so bright you can't take your eyes off it._

Shiro feels a warm glow in his chest at that sight. He'd seen this once before. Different perspective, different eyes, same story.

Until the little rascal drives off with his car.

Shiro laughs so hard he can't catch his breath for a long while. He utterly scandalises Mrs. Such and Such in the process; the lady walks off to phone the police, muttering something about military hotshots _all being the same, even the nice famous ones._ What she doesn't realise is that Shiro knows very well where the car is, and where is going; there's a tracker on it, but he's not going to share _that_ with the police.

It's going to be a long jog, but Shiro's hoping to find the kid before the police do.

… _So bright you can't take your eyes off it. Only an idiot would ignore it._

Shiro errs plenty, but he's not an idiot.


	7. A wandering spirit

_part VII: a wandering spirit_

In a manner too exemplary of his own military profession, he underestimates the police. They get the kid first. Maybe, Shiro thinks in a rare moment of cynicism, it's because they have _their cars_.

They put him straight in a juvenile detention centre, no warnings, no parent calls. Shiro raises his eyebrows at the harshness of it. Mrs. Such and Such (real name Andrews, apparently, and he does _not_ ask whether she's related to his favourite sergeant) had given him a lift to the local police station to file the report and press charges. He has absolutely no intention of doing that – not to the kid that just rivalled his own simulator scores on the first try. Even if he _is_ a discipline case.

"Shouldn't you give him a pep talk first, officer? It's just a teenager fooling around."

The social officer, a gruff short woman in uniform, looks at him as he were the most naïve man in the world. "It's not his first offence, sir."

"Oh." Shiro quiets. "Has he hurt anyone?"

"He steals every vehicle can get his scrawny hands on." The woman's tone suggests that this is at least as bad. "And then crashes it somewhere in the rocks. Little desert rat, that's what he is."

Shiro's sense of justice is immediately on fire at that. _Scrawny hands. Desert rat._ He keeps his face civil. "So has he ever crashed into a person?"

"No, and thank heavens for that. With the speed he goes at? It'd be straight-up murder." Something of his ire has to be showing anyway, because the officer takes a look at him and adds, "Don't pity him, sir. He's got more than his share of second chances, and blew each. He's not worth your time."

"I'll be the judge of that," says Shiro curtly, voice dipping into the cold commanding tone, and the social officer's face changes.

"Lieutenant Shiragane, sir-"

"Close the record, please. I will not be pressing charges. I want to talk to the boy's parents."

The officer shrinks under his chilling gaze. "He lives at the children's home, sir."

Shiro presses his lips into a thin white line. A thought flashes in his mind about the airy jagged peaks on Hokkaido, and the dreams that they have brought on. What kind of dreams has this child been exposed to?

"Then let him go. This has been enough of a punishment for a young man."

"Right away, sir." The social officer picks up the intercom obediently, fear of authority glinting in her eyes, even though the sourness of the task is still showing. "Sophie? Keith's leaving. Call the home to pick him up."

"Tell her I'll be upstairs to get him in a second."

The officer quivers slightly. "Uh. Um. _Takashi_ _Shirogane_ will come pick him up."

There's a moment of stunned silence on the phone, and then an explosion of static-ridden anxious prattle. Shiro doesn't listen; he's already high on the first flight of stairs to the detention cells. He's got a child to save.

-/-

His name is Keith Kogane, and he's the son of a hero firefighter that died six years ago. Shiro remembers that tragedy. With the deafening noise of sirens, military trucks drove out to help the firefighters; but the fire was too far out in the desert. Only Kogane, the loner from the further ranch, got there on time.

If there had been a child in the garrison talk at the time, Shiro can't remember.

Keith is silent. He sits in the corner of the detention cell, on a small bench opposite a high-mounted barred window, unkempt black bangs covering his face. His mouth is taut, without any signs of remorse or fear, a violently obstinate expression so out of place on his young face it would be ridiculous in any other scenario. Here, in the empty grey room, that adult grimace of frozen stubbornness sends chills down Shiro's spine.

No-one deserves this. No-one. And especially not this talented, orphaned child.

He smiles. Those dark, caustically burning eyes fix on him – and widen in sudden surprise. At his presence, or at his warm expression. Or maybe at the way Shiro steps out of the way not to block the exit.

"Come on out, Keith."

The teenager looks at the social officer behind him, eyeing her in distrust. The lady – still blushing violently at Shiro's presence in the flesh – clears her throat. "You heard the officer. Out."

Doubt flickers in Keith's dark eyes, along with the first glimmer of uncertainty. "You can't throw me in jail. I'm a minor."

"No-one's going to jail," says Shiro calmly, but Keith seems unconvinced. "Let's get you home."

He blinks. The brooding expression is gone for a moment, replaced by confusion. Then, somewhere in the depths of those dark dim eyes, a very distant light flickers uncertainly. "Where?"

And Shiro realises his mistake, because _of course,_ and something in his heart wrenches painfully at that tiniest splinter of hope that he's just dropped on the child, knowing full well what must come next –

"What do you mean, where? Mrs. McAllister is picking you up in fifteen minutes," says Sophie the social officer gruffly. And – just like that – the flicker of light disappears back in the void of Keith's eyes, and all that's left is an impassive face of a brooding teenager.

"That's enough, Miss Sophie. I'll take it from here." Shiro takes advantage of the officer's blushing face and walks off, motioning for Keith to follow him. Soft steps sound behind him after just a moment of hesitation, almost imperceptible in the noise of his army boots. The kid is light on his feet.

One more signature ascertaining he drops all charges, and they're out.

"I don't get it," Keith speaks out in wary incredulousness. Shiro doesn't look at him, not wanting to scare him off with his curiosity. "I steal your car, and you respond by helping me out?"

"Yeah," Shiro agrees easily, getting into the garrison jeep. "So you owe me one."

Keith looks like he wants to argue, but then he just drops his shoulders silently, resigning himself to whatever comes next. Shiro reaches out into the compartment at the passenger side, takes out the business card of the garrison assessment centre, and passes him little grey-and-orange piece of paper. "Be at this address tomorrow at zero-eight hundred hours."

Keith stares at the business card like he'd never seen one before. Then he brings the full weight of his attention to Shiro, raw uncertainty and confusion obvious in his expressive eyes. Shiro lifts the corner of his lip at him.

"You're getting a second chance."

Keith is speechless. Shiro rolls up the window and drives away, but a small strand of his thoughts stays firmly lodged to the business card in Keith's fingers.

-/-

"You think he's gonna show up?" Adam asks over a casserole. He's _technically_ supposed to be in the barracks at all weekday nights, but no-one from the garrison staff has been brave enough to point that out. Whatever rules Sebastian had planted for Shiro's protection, they hold firm.

"I hope he will."

Adam waits for him to continue, but Shiro's too deep in thought. He's dragging the pieces of the casserole around the plate aimlessly, tracing random oval patterns.

"Chris and Saba agreed to help out tomorrow," Adam says when the pause naturally fizzles out. "In case all those kicking and screaming teenage crowds do something unholy to the simulators. Holt's kid volunteered for tech support, too. Does he always talk at this speed, or just when the machines are concerned?"

Shiro flashes an absent-minded smile. "Like father, like son."

"Always, then."

He nods, distracted.

"Shiro."

"Mhm?"

"Shiro. You're drawing Jupiter rings on your plate."

"What? Oh." Shiro looks down at his place. Surely enough, the round slab of meat in the middle has ring-like smudges around it. He could even recognise the vague tomato sauce-based shapes: halo, main, Amalthea, Thebe… "Sorry1. I was listening."

Adam watches him carefully. "Where's your mind headed?"

"Do you remember the Jupiter mission?" asks Shiro in a slightly wistful voice, still swirling his fork in the paste to mark the Great Red Spot on the planetary surface. Adam's eyes follow the narrow movements of the prongs with keen attention.

"Calypso? That was ages ago. What would we've been, seven?"

"Younger. My mum got me a book about the mission. First time I ever looked up, stared into the sky, and told myself… _I want to go out there._ " Shiro's fork is now drawing the horizontal stripes of the atmosphere, and Adam finally snaps.

"Oh, for Christ's- give me that. Your vortices are all off." He snatches Shiro's plate from in front of him, and pours a drop of ketchup where the Great Red Spot should have been. Then he proceeds to meticulously adjust the atmospheric layers to be parallel.

Shiro raises an eyebrow at him. "At least I'm not forgetting about the cold one."

"I wasn't _forgetting_ , I was doing background first, you nudge." Adam drops a white bean where the Great Cold Spot should be. After a moment, he adds almost shyly, "That was my favourite colouring book of all time. Planets."

"A red booklet? Had a rat on the cover for some reason?"

"Yes! And a really off-balanced scale. Unless that rat was actually bigger than the Earth."

They both laugh, delighted, but Shiro's smile soon turns melancholic. "You ever thought who you'd be without someone planting that dream inside your head?"

Adam sighs, but without real annoyance. "This is about the car-stealing kid again, isn't it."

"Maybe."

"Let's just hope he shows up, then. Otherwise your saviour complex won't let you sleep for the rest of the year."

"I don't _have_ a saviour complex."

"Whatever you say, Shiro the Hero."

Shiro tsks and wrestles his plate back.

-/-

The test day is a difficult one, with seemingly endless masses of teenagers swarming the garrison grounds – and it's still just the ones chosen in preliminary selections. Chris and Saba, Adam's own Team Minx, meet them on the ground; Adam takes over quickly and the three of them head to the simulation room, ready to contain any inevitable technical meltdown. Shiro, meanwhile, is whisked away by Iverson. They welcome the prospective cadets, prying them out of their parents' doting hands, and divide them into ten-person groups. There are four tests they need to complete – muster, academic, physical, and flight – and the entire process is circular, one group coming while the other runs off to the other challenge. It's difficult to spot anyone in this hubbub, and it takes three hours until Shiro finally runs into Keith.

The kid is doing pull-ups. Shiro doesn't know where he's getting that strength from, and wouldn't be surprised if it were just sheer stubbornness, because Keith's biceps are the breadth of his own forearm. The teenager stills at the top of the bar when their eyes meet. Shiro nods at him warmly; Keith looks confused for a second, and then he just resumes the pull-up like nothing happened.

Shiro's glad, if only because he now looks less stupid convincing Iverson to edit his candidate list at the very last minute. It would have been embarrassing if he hadn't shown up. But he doesn't have time to ponder upon that too much; there is more muster to lead, and sergeant Andrews is gesticulating at him wildly to come and help.

The test day ends at eighteen hundred hours, and it takes even longer to get people out and sort through the ridiculous amount of paperwork they have produced. The only thing that makes this time worth it for Shiro is a high score board from the simulation: at the very top of the table, two powers of ten ahead of the runner-up, sits the name of one Keith Kogane.

He texts that to Adam triumphantly. The sour response tells him to refrain from I-told-you-sos until he could still locate his car. Team Minx are going out for a beer after they've cleaned up the sim-room, and he's invited; it's a rare chance to spend the evening with people his own age, and he's happy to feel included amongst Adam's squad –

But then Shiro notices that the perimeter is not _completely_ empty.

The hangars have been opened for visitors, and still some of the old ships glean warmly in the sunset light. A small, lanky figure with an overgrown mop of hair stands in front of the Calypso.

Shiro watches him for a long moment, but the teenager stands completely still, a sharp black contour against the silver metal. His eyes seem glued to the bulk of the spaceship. Shiro remembers his first trip to the garrison, back when his mother was still in the comms unit and not just the secretariat; the first time he'd seen the Calypso was not even a year after they'd come back, and he was clutching his book on the Jupiter voyage. The old awe is still fresh in his mind.

He walks up to Keith. "Thanks for coming. I never doubted you."

The kid draws his eyes away from the Calypso to glance at him in silent disbelief, as if words like that could only ever be meant in scorn. Then his gaze gravitates back to the ship.

"That's the Calypso," remarks Shiro after a moment. "The first ship to carry astronauts to the moons of Jupiter."

"It took them three years to get there." The kid's voice is unexpected in its stubbornness, not as much a conversation as an one-up stuck in Shiro's face. "Longest voyage of its kind."

He's surprised at his knowledge, but pleasantly so. "That's right."

The wind is blowing from the desert. A faraway engine starts up and disappears; probably Team Minx leaving for drinks, to one of those innumerable Spanish bars Shiro's never learnt the names of. He feels a passing tinge of regret at the missed opportunity, but there's a more immediate concern right here in front of him. Keith's gaze is burning a hole in the ship's plating.

"Reading about that mission is what made me want to be a pilot," Shiro says wistfully. "Those astronauts braved the unknown. People can accomplish incredible things if they're willing to put in time and effort."

Keith is looking at him now, and Shiro can sense he's hunting for any smidgeon of insincerity in those warm words, any trick, any hole. But there is none. This is not just the truth, this is _Shiro's_ truth.

 _And when you're running out of time, put in as much effort as you can, and maybe, if you're lucky, that'll balance out._

"I want to help you, Keith. I think you've got a lot of potential." More potential than the teachers' favourite, clearly, and more stubbornness to power through it, and a raw fascination with flight that Shiro can recognise as clearly as if he looked in the mirror. He remembers eavesdropping on the officers in their flat. _Prodigy. Would be wasted if not…_ "But what you decide to do with that potential is up to you."

Keith's dark eyes are open wide now, staring at Shiro like he were a spaceship himself. "Why do you even care?"

"Well, I'll be one of your commanding officers now. That means I have a duty of care."

Keith's pupils shrink. His voice is suddenly very tightly controlled. "I got in?"

"You were the best by far."

"But I, I…" He stutters, and self-hatred flashes on his face at that. "I failed my muster. I've never done this before." Then the anger sparks again, fiery and violent. "Am I your charity case?!"

"Keith." Shiro lets the teenager's words crash against an immovable front. "Absolutely not. We can teach you muster. But we can't give someone else your flight instincts."

Keith looks torn between fury and helplessness. "I don't want your pity."

"Pity has nothing to do with it. You think army's sentimental? You're here because you're the best we can get and _that's it._ " Shiro's face is dead serious. "Don't question it. _Never_ question it."

Keith is mute, his white face tight-strung in an intense effort to conceal emotions. Shiro looks away, back to the Calypso, and lets him process it in silence; the wind from the desert swirling around them both, whispering _patience_ and _focus_ in the back of his mind. They're a part of him now, these words, ever since that gust of wind at the pledging ceremony, ever since the news about his muscular dystrophy threatened to overthrow his mind. But they've made him stronger; he is stronger now. And he can be strong for others.

He can be strong for this boy.

"It's getting late. Do you want a ride back to the home?" He doesn't make the same mistake as the last time, careful to put in there the all-explaining _the._ Silence is his answer for a moment.

"Yeah," Keith says, voice unreadable. "Thanks."

-/-

Over the summer, when his focus slips away from the students and back to his own training, Shiro catches himself thinking about the kid at random moments. It's mostly idle curiosity; but after a while, he notices that the little Keith-distractions have started replacing his intrusive thoughts about the disease. He's still aware of it, as much as he is of his own heartbeat; these things are tightly tied together too, as the weakness lying inside his heart muscles could be the one to eventually end him. But his heartbeat isn't just heartbeat anymore. It's not just his own.

He has a duty of care.

And, sometimes, when he drives out of the garrison in the late afternoons, there's a lanky figure hanging out idly around the tall barbed fences, usually where the hangars are; he always waves a hand in greeting, and after a while Keith begins to wave back.

1 (przyp. aut.) You could say he… spaced out.


	8. A mission to savour the world

_part VIII: a mission to savour the world_

The new academic year brings along new challenges.

"She _told us_ he was a discipline case."

Shiro fights the urge to cover his face with a hand. "Does it matter what his old teacher said? Now you've turned the entire class against him."

Iverson casts him a impatient glance. "They don't learn the consequences now, they don't learn them at all."

"There are other ways to cultivate team spirit!"

"They're a squad, Shirogane. They'll straighten each other up better than anything we can do to them."

Shiro clenches his fists. This is not right. Neither for the class, which will now be forced to drill indoors for doing absolutely nothing wrong, nor for Keith. The kid did mess up the flight formation. But just on his own. And Shiro knows instinctively Keith holds his mistakes close, jealously, the biggest things he owns for himself, and it's just never crossed his mind before that they affect other people too.

"The other kids will lynch him if you close them up in there for three weeks."

"And he'll be all the better for it. Snip those showoff instincts at the bud."

Shiro opens his mouth to argue, but then a commotion reaches him –

Keith and the other kid from Fulham High, James Griffin, are being dragged to the office by a red-faced Andrews, both battered and bruised with bloody knuckles. Shiro hides his face in his palm.

-/-

He gets through the disciplinary meeting with a calm, collected face, not looking at Keith neither too obviously away from him. His eyes are on Shiro from the first moment he's dragged in, but then they drop; and there's just a dull sense of hopelessness in his face.

Then they walk him out, and there's just James left in there; and as much as Shiro is trying to be objective about it, he feels instinctive dislike for their model cadet. He's respectful, obedient, smart, but there's something sleazy about him as he tells his version of the story. The version that – of course – has the benefit of being corroborated by all the people in the room. Keith attacked when James was just reprimanding him. Shiro can believe that.

But Keith didn't use his voice to defend himself.

Shiro walks out, letting a cadet in on his way. Keith is sitting on the chair in front of the office, face blank. It hasn't even been two months.

"Hey."

The kid speaks out before he has the chance. "Look, I know I messed up. You should send me back to the home already. This place isn't for me."

It's a dull, defeated voice, and everything in Shiro's whole righteous being just _refuses to take it._ "Keith, you can do this."

The kid doesn't even look at him.

"I will _never_ give up on you."

 _Now_ he looks. And the blankness in his face shifts in shade, it's no longer despondence, it's – shock.

"But more importantly, you can't give up on yourself."

Keith's dark eyes are so wide he can see his own reflection in there, the grey and orange of his uniform lost in the sea of hopeless black. His voice is stunned. "You don't even know me."

"You're right. I don't." He's not sure himself why he cares so viscerally about this random teenager, one of the many hurt young men walking the corridors of the garrison every day, but he _does._ Maybe it's because of the _desert rat_ and the grey walls of the detention centre. Or maybe because of Sebastian. "But sometimes we all need a hand."

He reaches out.

Keith takes his hand. His grip is tight.

" _Why?_ "

"Because someone should. And because I can."

"I'm just gonna mess up again."

"You planning on it?"

"N-no." His face twists. "But that's how it always happens."

Shiro pulls him up to his feet. Keith stands up, still staring at him with wide eyes filled with incomprehension, but Shiro just gives him a small smile. "I'm a pretty patient guy. As long as I know you didn't mean it."

"I did." Something dark and vengeful flashes through Keith's face. "I always do. That's why I'm not any good here." A small pause, after which he adds, almost imperceptibly, "Or anywhere."

"Well, then. What is it that you want more – James Griffin hurt or your pilot licence?"

Keith avoids his eyes.

"… The licence."

"Then just hold on to that thought." Shiro gives him a reassuring smile. "You're a better pilot than you are a puncher, anyway."

Keith's lips twitch. "I'm a pretty good puncher."

"With your temper as it is, I'm sure one day I'll find out."

Keith stills as the quip like a touched wild animal. In a split second, Shiro can see him turn the sentence over in his head, poking warily at any potential danger or insult that lies within – and then the blank mask of impassivity shivers, splinters just a little crack, and Keith _smiles._

-/-

 _I'll never give up on you._

He's given that promise so easily like he hadn't been aware of the consequences. And there are consequences. Keith doesn't make his life easy – if he's not flying out of control, then he's butting heads with Griffin, and if he's not butting heads with Griffin, he's mouthing off through the comms. Sometimes Shiro finds it frustrating. Other times, he finds it funny. He's spent half his life being fodder for Adam's wit and now he's getting a double serving. But there are those small, precious moments – where Keith comes first on a particularly difficult obstacle simulation, or where he actually sucks it up and stays in formation the entire flight – that make him grateful for his assignment to the outreach programme.

Even if his time is shrinking to nine years, Keith's isn't. Even Shirowon't be able to be as good a pilot after he turns thirty, there is nothing lying in wait in the kid's bones to claim his steady hands.

And if Shiro just plays it right - if he can pass it on, a single unbroken line, just one thing – then his dream doesn't end. Then –

It can live through someone else. And the timeline won't end. It'll extend.

For the first time in years, he's got a solution he can work with.

He takes over a pilotage class one semester, and he begins with the tour of the Comet. His fondness for the ship has only been growing with time; not only has he broken a couple of speed records with her, but the memories of his trip to space, and then countless atmospheric flights, and his first serious mission lead, and _Sebastian_ all gather up in every nook and cranny of her spotless cabins. He leads the cadets from room to room, pointing out the ceiling handles for zero-G manoeuvring, the closed shelves and compartments for various equipment from pressuremeters to nailclippers, the pitch-black engine room with a white braided comet printed on the floor. Then he shows them a little plaque with five names, first of them his own, and another with the list of achievements for the ship herself.

"The Comet is the most advanced fighter jet in the world. It currently holds the world speed records for both orbital and atmospheric flight, and we're constantly looking for ways to improve her. Her next step will be interplanetary travel, and it's less far away than you think." Shiro flashes a broad, winning smile, looking at the enraptured faces of the cadets. "But there is even better news. By the time you graduate, we might be ready to streamline the production of jets like her, so that each of you gets to fly one to outer space. You would be true astroexplorers."

There are all kinds of enthralled expressions in front of him, but none as fiery as Keith's. Shiro can't wait to finish the next sentence and see the reaction.

"At the end of this year you will all sit a comprehensive test. The one that comes first will get to stay onboard as I fly the Comet."

A jolt goes through the cadets. Shiro's voice drowns in the sudden deafening noise and waving hands, the excitement bubbling over like an overcooked soup. The Comet is a legend; and as much as he wants to argue, he himself is one too. Both of them, _in flight,_ is an almost inconceivable prize.

Keith's jaw sets decisively.

Shiro grins. He can't wait.

-/-

When they leave the hangar, Keith straggles at the very end of the group, staying behind even when the lights go out. In the darkness, Shiro can barely see the contours of his silhouette, but the sight is unmistakable: Keith is leaning his forehead against the Comet.

It's the perfect mimicry of Shiro's old photo.

Shiro's heart swells painfully. He turns away quickly and calls after him, and after a long moment, Keith is by his side, but neither of them say a word.

-/-

It's almost terrifying to watch how single-mindedly Keith is working towards his goal. He withdraws from almost any interaction with the classmates, and gives irate responses when bothered; the rest of the class soon ignores him and begins to work around him, which Shiro supposes is a decent enough coping mechanism. They converge around Griffin, whose confidence and high-achieving record make him a natural leader, and Keith seems more than happy to be left alone. Only a chatty Cuban, Lance, keeps prodding him about some or other _rivalry;_ but that draws very little attention of Keith himself.

Griffin, on the other hand, appears to have understood that any outright antagonism with Keith would alienate him from Shiro as well. The violent confrontation between them doesn't repeat. James continues to be a model student, disciplined and charismatic and bright, and he makes at least as much of an effort as Keith in terms of flights and academics; and Shiro has to admit there is nothing intrinsically unlikeable in him. And yet – which is very, very unprofessional – he can't shake his aversion.

Something tells him that the apparent peace between Griffin and Keith is meant for his eyes only, and that underneath the surface, beyond the level of insults and punches, the caustic hatred is simmering even stronger.

He complains to Adam about the lack of team spirit with the young cadets, and his boyfriend snorts.

"You're too soft on them. You just have to treat them like the little bastards they are."

Shiro grins, amused, because Adam's own stints as an instructor are nothing but agreeable. "That from a future teacher?"

"Wisest advice you'll ever gonna get. They smell fear."

"Adam, you drove back to the barracks at oh-three hundred because your student was nervous about the tests next morning."

Adam reddens slightly. "That's beside the point."

"I guess you smell _their_ fear, too."

" _The point is_ you're too soft on them. It's obvious enough you have favourites, you might as well own it. Let them know point-blank that whoever is mean to your little kleptomaniac will have to deal with you next."

Shiro sighs. He guesses it _is_ obvious he has favourites. "That's terrible advice."

"Always here to drag you back to reality."

"And it doesn't fix my teamwork problem at all."

"How many people do you have in your classroom?"

Shiro casts him an inquiring glance. "Eighteen. Why?"

"Chris, Saba and I have been talking," says Adam, looking away. "We could take some of the first-years to shadow us on a couple of races. Show them how it's supposed to be done. If that's something you want to try."

Shiro is surprised by the idea. Then he gets it, and his face splits into a wide beaming smile. "An actual, physical teamworking exercise! And with a purpose? That's a great plan!" But then his train of thought hits an obstacle. "But wouldn't that slow you down?"

Adam shrugs. "We all want to go into teaching stream after this year. It doesn't matter."

Shiro kisses him. Adam blinks, thrown out of balance by that sudden display of affection, but melts into his arms easily. "It's no big deal."

"You're giving away your place in the race to help my students out. It's a big deal."

"Oh, shut up."

Shiro grins, and pulls him in for another kiss.

"So he has a problem," remarks Adam dryly between his lips, his hands wandering down Shiro's spine. "He gets turned on by altruism. Or what he _thinks_ is altruism. Who's that guy, and who let him out of his space opera?"

Shiro pauses. He looks Adam straight in the eye, just looks; and watches as his gaze slowly darkens, clouded and overwhelmed with something hot and promising and completely unrelated to teaching, and very, very inappropriate.

"Adam."

Adam swallows hard. "Still here." His hands clench on the small of Shiro's back, grasping a fistful of the uniform. Shiro cups his cheek, staring intently at those half-lidded, hazy eyes, and gently takes off his glasses.

" _You_ shut up."

Adam doesn't argue.

-/-

Putting the teenagers in the Minx is a great idea. Both Chris and Saba are very warm people, and Shiro is perpetually surprised how much of Adam's snarkiness mellows completely when faced with kids. (He files that thought as promising for an unspecified later.) The first batch of first-years are Pat, Hunk, and Annie, neither particularly standing out, but hard-working and decent; Shiro chooses them first because they seem the least problematic of all his students, and least likely to mess up the Minx's race score. The kids are delighted. Iverson less so, but he's not opposed.

Griffin goes in the next batch, then others. Then, with a heavy heart, Shiro sends out Keith; when they board, he can see Adam look the boy over with a lingering curious glance. Keith notices the attention, because _of course_ he does, and walks on board with a lethal expression.

Shiro is vibrating with nerves until the ship lands again. The cadets disembark, and the second they are off, he can hear Adam's voice in the comm. "Yeah, that kid's not flying with me again."

He keeps his voice low. "What did he do?"

"He fucking tried to take over."

Shiro stills. He stares at the narrow silhouette at the landing pad, and desperately wishes he'd listened to his own instinct and kept Keith out of this exercise. But it was about their teamwork problem, and Keith _was_ their teamwork problem… "Describe this to me."

"I'll paint you a scene." Even through the static, Adam's voice is cold with fury. "We're in the race. Another fighter's overtaking us. He says, _I'd do it better._ And then he fucking _gets out of the harness and tries to get the hold of controls_."

Shiro is frozen in dread. "Are you okay?"

"I'm okay. But he gave Chris a black eye."

Shiro can already see Andrews hurry to the landing pad, yelling through the engine noise, face completely red. Keith is standing upright, eyes fixed on Shiro; but the only thing Shiro can think about is how _easy_ it is to crash a garrison fighter, how dangerous it is to bother the pilot, how knocking a pilot away from the controls could have ended up in all of them dead, Keith himself and Lance and Zara but also Chris and Saba and _Adam –_

He swallows with difficulty.

 _I'll never give up on you._

Keith hangs his head low, and doesn't struggle as Andrews drags him away.

-/-

He argues with Iverson for three days straight before they agree on suspension, not expulsion. And only because Shiro threatens to resign.

"I came here to _help people._ If I can't do it, then what's the point of the academy?"

"You can't help everyone _,_ Shirogane!"

"Not everyone. But I can get through to him. I can _do this._ "

"This kid has been nothing but problems since you dragged him in here. He was a disaster before, and he'll be a disaster again. Just let. It. Go." Iverson is angry, but his fury is no match for Shiro's.

"This _disaster_ is better on simulators than anyone had _ever_ been. Including me. He had temper problems because _this_ is how he's been treated his entire life." He clenches his fists. "He's top of the class. Making _progress._ If we let go of him now, then we're losing the biggest hope this garrison has had for space flight in years! I'm not standing for this. I'd rather go right now."

Iverson whitens, and stares at him in alarm. But Shiro is telling _nothing but the truth._

There's a long pause.

"He almost killed cadet Warden," Iverson says flatly. Shiro clenches his teeth until his jaw hurts. This is the lowest of blows and Iverson knows it.

But this is also the truth.

Keith almost killed Adam.

Almost. He hangs on to that words. It's the only one that matters right now. He looks straight back at Iverson.

"And I still want him here. That's how important this is."

His commander purses his lips tightly and nods.

Shiro's legs go weak with relief. He can barely walk out of the office before he collapses on the chair, head in palms, and just stares into nothingness for a long time.

-/-

With Keith suspended for the last month of the year, it's James Griffin that wins the Comet flight. Shiro supposes that's only fair. He tries his best to be kind.

James deserves it. He's a good student. His eyes shine excitedly as he gets onboard. He clasps the harness around his chest and doesn't take it off, exactly as Shiro tells him to. He asks the right questions. He even points out a blinking diagnostic that Shiro's missed, and which turns out to be an unfilled log from the last flight. Shiro allows him to fill it up with his own voice; and James does it so proudly his chest is almost bursting through the harness.

Shiro ignores the dull feeling that gives him. The kid deserves better. It's not his fault that his teacher famously has a _saviour complex,_ and James is about as saved as he can be.

He ignores the next thought.

The Comet is humming steadily under his fingers. His trusted companion, his closest partner. Unshakeable, and steady, and swift through the pitch-black endless void, and his, only his. Shiro closes his eyes and listens to the electric noise of the ship coming to life, and holds that like a meditation mantra until James' peppering questions drag him back out to reality.

The flight's a success. It's also another way for Sam and him to verify their continual improvements. For space expeditions, the Comet needs at least a three-person crew; but for atmospheric flights, they've been long since trying to make her operational with just him. It works out fine. They disembark, and Shiro files a test report when James is jumping excitedly; it brings a pale smile to his lips, and he praises his student's professionalism in the cockpit.

He _is_ trying to be kind. Sam Holt throws him a long glance, but says nothing, and they leave.

Shiro can't shake the dull, gloomy feeling of failure. It follows him into the classrooms, and into drills, and into the cockpit, and even back home. Especially back home. Adam reacts to any mention of Keith with caustic fury, and Shiro can't blame him; it wasn't just _him_ in the cockpit. It was Chris, and it was Saba, and the Minx herself; _and_ it was the two other students Adam was responsible for. If Keith were to _try_ putting together a more perfect set to threaten, just to make himself a sworn enemy out of Adam, he wouldn't have caused this much damage.

So Shiro bottles it up, flies, trains, and teaches, gives praise and advice, signs photos of the Comet, and waits.

The year ends, and the workload gets easier; Adam and he drive up to the desert for a few days to clear their minds, and then they come back, sunburnt and tired and thirsty, to hide in their air-conditioned apartment and drink mojitos. It's easier to pretend things are going well when he's not seeing students every day; Keith is coming back after the holidays, and then they'll have a conversation about responsibility _and_ accountability. And then he'll find a way to coax the kid out of his shell again. He'll find a pretext to get them to fly together. He'll prove to Keith that he hasn't given up – not on Keith himself, and not on his dream.

But then, one evening, it all crashes to a million little pieces.

He's walking back from the hangars after a late session with Sam when he hears an unexpected noise. The Comet's hangar is open; the heavy metal curtain that divides her from the outside world is being raised slowly. Shiro's eyes widen.

And then the ship begins to roll out.

He takes one look at it and throws himself into a devastating run. The Comet emerges on the runway deceptively slowly, her glistening white plating majestic in the dark evening, but the crawl is an illusion because of the size; it moves faster than he can reach it. His muscles are crying out in agony as he speeds up.

Someone is taking the Comet.

He reaches the wheel and leaps at it with all his might. His fingers close on the metal rods of the aircraft's sturdy silver leg. He's yanked back immediately by the momentum of the ship, his body strung like a flag from the metal post; he pulls himself in and begins a slow, capricious crawl up the leg. The ship's still not airborne. Maybe he can still reach the cockpit in time –

The momentum throws his legs straight out in the air, the wheels making a deafening amount of noise, and he knows in a heartbeat it's commencing take-off. But this runway is too short, they'll never take off, they'll crash it, they'll crash _his Comet –_

He climbs, his muscles protesting wildly, the skin on his face burning against the wind. Thank the heavens for the pilot suit he'd been wearing, or else his clothes would already be torn. But then – then the earth escapes from under his eyes, and he tilts, and they've taken off. A siren goes off in the garrison, and Shiro can hear it even through the ear-splitting noise of engines. He clenches his teeth and climbs up. He _knows_ this ship. He'd spent the last two years of his life taking care of it. There are nooks here only he can find, and he _will._

No-one will ever take the Comet away from him.

The ship manoeuvres wildly, and he barely hangs on, but he finally gets to the bottom of the ship and pries open a handle from its silver underbelly. It had been put there for the mechanics to hold on to in zero-G, and not for a human hanging on for dear life during takeoff, but he couldn't be happier. The Comet gains altitude fast, and soon it'll be too cold to open anything, so he needs to think fast –

 _Think, Shiro, think!_ He's got the handle. There are more of them, but he'll need to pry each one out of rapidly cooling metal. There's an airlock on the right side of the ship, openable from the outside. He could go from there. If the wind doesn't blow his face off before that. He reaches out experimentally, and is almost blown away, but the other handle is there; he pulls at it, and it comes out unsteadily, and his entire life flashes before his eyes before it clicks and locks in upright position. The ship is circling the city now. Shiro is _not_ looking down.

He climbs, torturously slowly, handle after handle, feeling his face slowly beginning to freeze off, until he reaches the airlock. He hangs on with three limbs, as much of his body in contact with the ice-cold, biting plating as he can suffer through, and with all his strength bangs into the airlock opener.

Thank heavens for exploration missions. Thank heavens for peaceful empty space that allowed that design. Thank heavens for Sam Holt's curiosity for space rubble. Shiro tumbles inside the airlock breathlessly, and tries to find something to hold onto there, but there's nothing, and one more second and he'll fly out like he's a piece of space rubble himself –

The lock hisses and closes. Shiro falls on the floor gracelessly, and can't move. His face and hands are burning.

The pilot must have noticed the airlock opened, and closed it by instinct. Shiro breathes a shaky breath of relief and forces himself up. Now he needs to get to the cockpit, take out the hijacker, take over the ship, land – _focus. Focus, Shiro._

He scraps himself off the airlock floor and gets inside the ship. His heart clenches at the all-familiar sights of the white-braided comet on the floor. He's her rightful pilot. He'll protect her. He doesn't have a gun or a rifle, but he's got his hands, and they're deadly enough.

With his heart in his throat, he sneaks into the cockpit –

And freezes.

Because the Comet's hijacker is Keith.

Blood rushes to his frostbitten ears.

Keith looks back at him, and the shock makes the entire ship shudder precariously. Shiro swears out loud; he's thrown to the side by the swerve. Without thinking, he gets to the co-pilot seat in less than a second. "Hands on the steers!"

Keith's face is white. " _How_ -"

"Fly now, talk later! You need to land her!"

"But-"

"Adjust the course, Keith! We're losing altitude! Increase elevation by-" He takes a frantic look at the controls, and a cloud of concentration descend on him. _Focus._ "Thirty two degrees."

The course is adjusted. Shiro dares breathe and puts on his harness. "Now bank right. We're too far out to commence landing. You need to set course for base."

Keith is shivering. "You weren't onboard. I checked."

"Course for base, Keith."

The teenager does that. Shiro notices, beside himself, that although every other part of his body is trembling like a leaf in the wind, Keith's hands are still steady. He finds an odd joy in that – a distraction for his overstrained mind. "ETA three minutes. Then we need to commence landing manoeuvres. It's going to be tough without flight control, but we'll manage." His gaze flickers to the headset thrown away from the controls, buzzing with angry static, and he thinks about the siren in the garrison.

This is going to be the one mess he won't be able to contain.

"Shiro, I…" Keith stutters helplessly. Anger, frustration, fear, and confusion all fight for dominance on his face.

"When you tried to take over the Minx." Shiro's tone is hard, crisp. "That was my boyfriend in there. You could have all died."

Anger wins. "You should have just let them kick me out."

"No. I'm not giving up on you."

Keith's face cracks. " _Why?!_ I took your ship! I can still kill us _right now!_ I'm- I'm just not right for this, I'm just not right, why do you care so much about me?! Just leave me alone _like everybody else!_ "

"No." Shiro's voice doesn't change. "You want to know why, Keith? Because that's what a team means. You don't get to take your mistakes and go away. They _affect other people_."

Those dark eyes are wide. "That's not fair," Keith whispers coarsely as he stares at the Comet's controls.

"Good things too. Especially good things. Then they multiply, and you're much happier that way. But bad things as well. And sometimes…" Shiro looks Keith straight in the eye, and he knows his decision is made. "Someone else takes the fall for you."

Keith understands in a heartbeat. "You can't. You can't! This is not fair!"

"Get out of the chair, Keith." Shiro unclasps the harness and crosses the cockpit. The teenager's face is strung helplessly, and he tries to struggle, but Shiro grabs him by the jacket and tosses him out without any effort. "I said I'm never giving up on you."

Keith picks himself up from the floor, eyes burning. "That was supposed to be a good thing!"

"Go to the engine room. There's a locker in there you can fit inside. The code is 2902."

"You can't! I'm not letting you!"

"Keith!" Shiro snaps. "This is an order!"

"I don't care about orders!"

"Then what do you care about, Keith?! Flying?! Then I can tell you that you will never fly anything else in your life if you don't follow my order _right. This. Instant!_ "

Keith's face breaks. His narrow breast is rising and falling feverishly as he stares at Shiro's immovable form.

"They'll take you away."

And, just like that, Shiro's heart melts inside his uniform, like a pebble thrown into the heart of the Sun.

"They won't. I promise. Go."

Keith hesitates, and then runs off from the cockpit.

Shiro sits down at the Comet's controls and commences landing. His hands are raw, painful, and his face feels like it's going to peel off, but it doesn't matter. He focuses.

The wheels hit the ground hard. Not his proudest land, but without flight control or fully operational systems, he'll chalk it up to circumstance.

Shiro straightens up and unarms the aircraft door. Then, shoulders heavy in Earth-gravity, he walks out onto the floodlight-lit runway, helicopters whirring overhead, his arms held steady above his head.


	9. Just a human

_part IX: just a human_

Shiro knows what he can do. He's spent most of his life steadily pushing the edge of possible things. He's his own category, his own brand of quality; all rules have bent around him like the lines of gravitational field, ever since he was thirteen, the youngest, the fastest, the best. Skirting responsibility for crashing Dreamboat's engine. Skipping years of academy. Going into space at twenty-one. Even having his boyfriend live with him instead of the barracks. And he could twist the rules on his own, exert some of that gravitational pull of his fame and legend, make sure Keith had his chance again, and again, and again.

But this is it.

He's too far gone to escape the consequences now. He can't turn it around.

This is where he takes the fall.

He doesn't struggle when the soldiers take hold of him, pushing him on with the barrels of loaded rifles. Takashi "Shiro" Shirogane, a hijacker. They lead him to an airtight chamber, strip him out of the suit and frisk him, finding nothing but the bloodstains on the inner sides of his gloves. By then his face gets so raw and painful that he can barely see. They lead him to a cell, and a paste for frostbite is handed to him briskly; he thanks for it with a quiet voice, applies it as best as he can with his bloody hands, and shuts down.

Sam Holt comes in the night, when the cameras conveniently turn away.

"Shiro." His voice is insistent in the heavy darkness. "I know you didn't do it."

"Sam, I need you to do something for me."

Silence. "I hope you have the next sentence well thought-out."

Shiro doesn't. He was never planning on becoming a criminal in his own garrison. But the other possibility entails Keith taking the blame, and he won't stand for that. "I need you to get to the Comet before they search it and open my locker in the engine room. There's a kid in there. Let him out. He was never here."

The darkness is quiet, stunned. "Keith?"

"Yeah."

"But how did you… my God." Sam sounds throttled. "Your hands. You hung on?"

Shiro smiles. It causes a paroxysm of pain on his raw face. "Yeah. Those handles saved my life."

"I knew we had to do repairs in space."

"Well, tell your son I say thanks."

"Shiro…" He can only imagine the stunned worry and anxiety on the man's face. "I'll do what I can. But I don't know if we can contain it this time. This could end in a court-martial."

"I know."

Helplessness radiating from Sam is so think he can feel it even in the darkness. "Why did he even do it?! They would have shot on sight! If it wasn't you in there…"

Shiro feels cold. He knows that, but hearing it in Sam's trembling voice is something else. "But it was me. Just make sure everybody believes that."

"No-one will. They all know you, Shiro."

And that's why it has to be him, why Keith can't have ever been there. Because Shiro still has the benefit of the doubt. Shiro can walk out of a hijacked plane and still hope for things to turn out fine, because he's _Shiro,_ the pilot and record-holder and command's darling _._ Because of the million chances given to him before. And for every single one of them, Keith's only chance was to break things, or steal things, or run away… _They would have shot on sight._

"Can you make sure there are no recordings of him anywhere in the base all day?"

"I'll get Matt to do it."

"Good. Thank you, Sam. We'll get through this."

"Of course. It's _you_ we're talking about." Sam reaches out across the bars to clasp a hand on his shoulder, and Shiro nods in the darkness. "I'll be back as soon as I can."

Then he's alone.

He's staring down at his bloodied hands, absent-mindedly counting the painful pulse throbbing in the gashes. He did it. Sam will take care of it. Keith is safely away from it all.

Seven and a half years left. When was the last time he thought about it?

 _Patience._ He waits for the quiet voice of the wind in his mind to tell him what to do, to find a solution out of this hopeless impasse, to breathe out another single word that would give him a moment of perfect clarity, an understanding of what he must do – but there's nothing. His thoughts are his alone. He is alone. And, despite everything he told both Keith and Sam, despite the brave front he _must_ put up even for himself just to shield from the mounting despair, Shiro doesn't know whether he's going to come out of this one safe.

One way or another, his career is over. He'll be tried for hijacking a ship.

 _His_ ship. The Comet.

Even if everything turns out alright, they'll never allow him to fly her again.

Shiro chokes. His stomach is clenching spasmodically in gut-wrenching, visceral grief.

-/-

The proceedings are kept hidden. No-one wants the world-wide scandal of the Earth's youngest astronaut going rogue. Shiro answers all the questions he can, and bows silently when he can't. He confesses to everything.

Sanda looks just about ready to tear her hair out at his mute submission. Neither of her commanders seem better. "Nothing of this makes any sense, Lieutenant. You fly this ship every day for two years, legally. You could keep doing that. Instead, you cut the wires, force open the door, take off without authorisation on a runway that is terminally short for this aircraft, put the entire base on high alert, and land ten minutes later. _Why_?"

Shiro nods quietly. "I made a mistake, ma'am."

"That mistake will cost you your head if you don't explain yourself right now."

"If I may, Admiral," Sam Holt interjects from his corner, face cool, and Shiro feels a spark of gratitude through his numbness. "We did have the flight scheduled. The system didn't process it. I'm not surprised the flight control panicked, and this is all very unfortunate, but there is no need for threats like that."

"Oh, _bullshit._ " Flight Commander Ryu bangs his fist against the podium. "Do both of you think we're a bunch of morons? Takashi Shirogane, a defector? Look at this man! It wasn't him. Who are you trying to cover for, Lieutenant?"

"I'm with Ryu," says Professor Montgomery, looking at Shiro cautiously. "He has a record of martyrdom. And absolutely no reason for the hijacking. It's basically his ship, for goodness' sake."

"There was no-one else in there," says Commander Hendrick. "We checked it. And any other test is going to give as many false positives as there have ever been cadets onboard."

Iverson stays silent. Shiro glances at his commanding officer, his face carefully schooled into impassivity. He hasn't been expecting the man to come to his defence, but his silence is even more damning.

Then Iverson looks back at him, and suddenly Shiro knows with unshakeable certainty that Iverson _knows,_ he _knows_ it was Keith all along, and if he doesn't have proof yet, Sam's behaviour and excuses are all his commander needs. The two of them had known each other long before Shiro came along.

But now Iverson has a choice: either he loses Shiro, or he loses Keith –

Which also means losing Shiro.

Shiro glances away. The stress is pounding in his frostbitten, painful temples.

"There's one more thing," says the fourth commander, Dos Santos. "I agree that he had no reason doing that himself. But that runway was in no way long enough for a safe takeoff of an orbital fighter. We could believe that Lieutenant Shirogane would be able to fly it like that, but anyone else? I doubt it."

"His hands didn't get this bad on their own." Commander Hendrick casts Shiro a long look. "Did you pilot the ship under duress, Lieutenant?"

"No, sir."

All the commanders exchange looks.

"And what happened to your face?"

"Frostbite, sir. I lost cabin pressure."

"Enough." Admiral Sanda cuts them all off curtly. "This is getting us nowhere. Shirogane, are you able to explain why you cut the wires and forced the door open?"

Shiro hesitates only for a second. "I was scheduled for a start, ma'am. It wasn't happening. My temper got the better of me."

Ryu snorts. "So this is what, a bad case of vandalism? _Hijacking_ _a ship_? Surely you can't believe that."

"It _is_ his ship, for all intents and purposes. Especially if he was cleared to start, it's like breaking into his own house." Professor Montgomery seems to be hesitating, looking to Sam for more support. "Is that right? The Comet was to launch on that short runway?"

"The testing backlog didn't get properly processed. That's my own fault." Sam sounds genuinely sorry. "I submitted the whole documentation today."

"Convenient," remarks Ryu acidly. Sam sends him a calm, ice-cold glance.

"I invite you to find one wrong integer in my log before you question my character, Commander."

"It's my fault," says Iverson curtly.

Every pair of eyes in the room centres on him. Shiro feels like not only his forehead, but entire brain were covered in frostbite.

"Shirogane and I had an argument about the test results that evening. Specifically the runway length. I put pressure on him to get better." Iverson's voice is brusque, unfriendly, but Shiro can't believe what the commander is saying. He's – _he's bailing him out._ "Not surprising he snapped."

Shiro hangs his head low in pretend-shame, deep enough for the surprise on his face to pass for a grimace of pain. He says nothing.

There's a grunt of frustration from Ryu. "Here's the third of them. So now it explains everything? The wounds, the cut wires, the wrong runway? Completely ignoring flight control? From an ace pilot with no motive and perfect disciplinary record? This is a cover-up and you _all_ know it."

"Lieutenant." Shiro raises his gaze at the sound of Professor Montgomery's voice. "Were you put under pressure by your commanding officer to improve test scores?"

Shiro hesitates. Iverson looks at him, and his face is terse, but his good eye closes and opens in a blink just a millisecond longer than normal. "… Yes, ma'am."

Ryu makes an impatient noise. "Are we honestly listening to the same man here?"

"I'm not proud of it," Iverson says in a gruff tone. "But I'd rather suck it up and admit to a mistake than lose my best pilot."

Sam clears his throat. "We did hit a snag in June. Commander Iverson has been insistent on delivering better results before the cadets return and Shiro's focus slips again."

"Is that what this is about? Shirogane's teaching?" Admiral Sanda casts Iverson a sharp look. "Elaborate, Mark."

Iverson shrugs. "There's nothing to say. He wasn't giving his best. I set him straight."

"Wait," interjects Dos Santos, "so it _is_ just the case of vandalism? If the pilot was given authorisation and put under pressure to fly-"

"-then we're all ignoring the fact that _his hands are all but skinned,_ " says Ryu loudly. "Admiral, surely you're not falling for this very hastily organised cover-up?"

Sanda looks at Iverson for a long moment, and then casts a measured glance at Sam Holt. Then, finally, she turns back to Shiro. "Lieutenant Shirogane, confirm this to me. You _are_ aware that if someone else did take the aircraft, and you act to protect them, then you are accessory in the hijacking and will be tried as such."

Shiro's heart drops to his stomach. This could be the end of his career. Cut off seven and a half years short.

"Yes, ma'am."

"And you are also aware that lying to the disciplinary committee can result in your dishonourable discharge, irrespective of your innocence or guilt."

At least he had those two years. He'd been to space. He piloted the Comet on her maiden journey. "Yes, ma'am."

"Lieutenant Shirogane, I'll only ask this once." Admiral Sanda stares straight at him, her entire face sculpted in hard cold steel. "Was there anyone else onboard the aircraft?"

Shiro straightens up. This is his last chance. His entire life is on the line. If this is the end, he'll no longer be in the position to help _anyone_.

But he's made a promise.

There's no way out but through.

"No, ma'am."

Ryu makes a disgusted noise. "I say court-martial."

"Sergeant Andrews, escort the lieutenant out." Sanda nods at the man behind him, and Shiro is pulled back. He winces as Andrews takes hold of arms, his hands grazing the uniform painfully. "We've heard enough."

Shiro wants to scream, wants to hit someone, wants to fight his way to the Comet and _actually_ hijack it, so that if he's going down, he'll go down in flames of the _whole of him,_ pilot and ship – but he doesn't.

He isn't Keith.

Andrews is smiling under his breath, a small vengeful smile, and Shiro hates him.

-/-

He doesn't know how much time passes in his cell. They finally bring a doctor along to take a look at his injuries, and Shiro doesn't speak to the man at all. He swallows a hiss of pain when his hands are treated with a disinfectant, and then bandaged up into awkward blocky shapes. Then the physician leaves, and Shiro clenches his fists so hard the bandage turns violently red. He'd be useless as a pilot now. Too slow.

He tries to meditate, but fails.

 _Adam._ He'll be half-dead from worry. Even if Sam did tell him the truth, it wouldn't make it any better. And _Keith –_

When he made that promise to never give up on him, Shiro never expected it would cost him his entire life. His career – space – _the Comet –_

 _They'll take you away._ Those furious dark eyes opening up to pure dread. And Shiro can't regret it, he _can't,_ because if he hadn't taken this on his own head, one of the unshot bullets from those mechanic rifles would have lodged itself in between Keith's eyes.

And everything he'd have done next would have been stained by that blood.

 _That's_ his moment of clarity.

Shiro forces himself to come to terms with the court-martial, but the only thing he can think about is Keith's expression as he ran off to the engine room. _I won't let them. I promise. Go._

"I'm sorry," he whispers into the darkness in choked Japanese, staring into the black emptiness, the frostbite on his cheeks stinging sharply with two salty trails slowly crossing his face. It might be the one promise he shouldn't have given. One he'll be forced to break.

-/-

He is back in front of the disciplinary committee, and he's trying to gauge anything from their faces, but the admiral and her commanders are still like old military statues. His heart is pounding in his chest, each gash and burn on his hands and face throbbing in the same painful rhythm.

"You're banned from flying," Sanda says without preamble.

Shiro's vision goes dark.

The Earth-gravity is crushing his breath in his lungs. It's too much. It's – they can't, they can't, they _can't – no – no – he's still got seven and a half years, they can't –_

But Sanda continues speaking, and even though he can barely hear her through the deafening throb of blood, Shiro hears _September_ and, with an unimaginable effort of sheer will, forces himself out of his shock.

"Consider that a warning, Lieutenant. You need to control your temper better, even if you are under pressure. Considering your… exceptional record, as well as lack of previous issues of this kind…" Sandra glances at Iverson briefly. "If you learn your lesson here, there is no need for it to be a career-defining incident."

Shiro is light-headed. He opens his mouth, splitting the painful corners of his lips, finding his voice in the depths of his throat like from a black slippery well. It comes out hoary. "Am I getting my flight clearance back?"

Sanda casts him an irritated glance. "Do pay attention, Lieutenant. Not before September."

He closes his eyes.

 _This is not the end._

 _This is NOT the end._

The relief sweeps over him in a powerful gust, like the wind from the desert.

"We're also halting any further development of the Comet until the end of the year," says Sanda, now directly to Iverson, and the commander purses his lips grimly. "Hopefully it will give Lieutenant Shiragane more time to focus on his _teaching duties._ "

Shiro is trying to understand the double and triple meanings of the verdict, the _vandalism_ he's being disciplined for meaning that Sam's ruse worked, and Iverson's bluff about their disagreements did too; but if he is honest with himself he _doesn't care right now._ "Am I still the Comet's designated pilot?"

A pause. Sanda looks at him sourly, and then casts a questioning glance at Sam Holt. "Are there any other pilots in the garrison that would be able to fly the Comet?"

"On their own?" Sam considers the question. "No, ma'am."

"Well, see to it that there are. We need a spare. In case our single prodigy goes rogue again." The admiral gives Shiro a tight, dry smile. "It seems like we have no choice but to give it back to you, Lieutenant."

 _Her. Give_ her _back to me._ Shiro doesn't say that, just bows deeply and counts his blessings.

His life will continue after all.

He'll fly, and he'll have the Comet. Everything else he can deal with.

Ryu and Hendrick are sitting at the podium with stony faces, but Iverson nods to him, and Sam's eyes are sparkling with joy and relief, and Shiro allows himself to be pulled into this numb light-headed relieved feeling until he's drowning in it.

-/-

He's shaking so much Adam needs to support him up the stairs. He can't stop. His face and hands are peeling off, and the deadly stress is leaving his body in spasms, he's just brushed not just with death – _the slippery open surface of the airlock_ – but with the loss of everything.

He wonders blearily whether this is how the late stages of his disease are going to look like.

Adam is deathly white at his side, but whatever fury is bubbling up inside him, he keeps it bottled. For the moment. They get to the flat and Shiro finally collapses on the couch, covering his face with palms, wound to wound, silent sobs shaking his entire body.

"So that's your limit, huh." Adam says in a quiet voice. "I was wondering when I'd get to see it."

He can't speak. His throat is shutting down on itself.

He hears a quiet rustle of steps in the kitchen, a sound of an opened and closed cabinet; the sharp smell of antiseptics reaches him as if from afar, followed by a crunching whirr of the coffee grinder. Then Adam's hands nudge his arms apart, pull down at his wrists so his hands are laying on his knees palm up, and quickly undo the red, blood-drenched dressing.

It hurts, but Shiro is keeping his eyes shut, his mouth taut. In the middle of the ministrations, he can feel Adam's breath on his skin; dry lips touch the inside of his wrist, pressing a short, gentle kiss, and then they disappear.

When the new bandage is put on, Adam moves to his face. Shiro winces.

"Oh, don't be a baby. You're tough enough to hold on to a _starting_ _orbital jet_ , you're tough enough for some cream."

A warm sponge is put on his forehead next. Adam pushes his chest down to the couch with his usual briskness, and Shiro lets him drag his limp body to a horizontal position. Another warm rag lands on his cheeks, across the bridge of his nose, covering his lips; Shiro breathes out shakily into the moist heat, glad his expression is now all but hidden. He can't get a hold of himself.

Adam walks off for a moment, and Shiro can hear the express and the milk steamer. Then the smell of coffee comes closer, ever the relief; he blinks uncertainly to see Adam sitting on his knees next to the couch, his face close to his own.

It's not smiling.

"You really outdid yourself this time, Shirogane."

Shiro moves his lips with effort, his voice throttled by the rag. "Can we not do this now?"

"No. You're the one always going on about _not wasting time._ So guess what, Shiro? We're not gonna waste it. Especially that if you'd had one ounce less of that mad luck of yours, we wouldn't have _any_ time at all." Adam's voice is tight with anger. "Have you lost your fucking mind?"

Shiro is silent.

He might have.

But when the push came to shove, and the Comet was being taken away – his throat closes up again at just the _thought_ of it, and how he has just been a hair's breadth of actually losing her – and his entire _life –_

"Please," he whispers, his voice throttled. "Not now."

The hand holding his wrist shivers. Adam violently presses his lips to Shiro's arm. "I thought- Shiro, a _court-martial._ You could have died. And then you could have been kicked out! You _hung on to a starting ship, for fuck's sake,_ do you ever think about yourself?! Not your fucking great dreams, your _legacy_ , your heir apparent… just yourself?!"

His voice rings in the apartment, anger and grief and anxiety all choking in their rawness. Shiro feels another pain throbbing unsteadily deep in his chest, the ache of fallen expectation. He's let Adam down. Again. Because of unchecked selfishness, last time; and because of too little of it now.

It was in this room. But later they made up in this room. And then, before, he hid in here from his disease when it threatened to overwhelm him. And _then_ , even before, when he was nineteen and frustrated with his mother, Adam offered him a home, and Shiro pushed him down and took him, had all of him, for the first time in this very couch…

Shiro realises, dimly, through his strained mind, that all his life that wasn't in flight has always orbited around this room.

And a thought flickers in his mind, something he'd considered before.

Seven and a half years. Not much. Fifteen, if they're together. And if he can bring himself to let go of this nightmare, to forgive himself for this and forgive _Keith,_ then maybe even longer…

But Adam is right.

He shouldn't waste time.

His arm bends at the elbow with too much effort, his muscles feeling weak from stress. His gashed, bandaged hand comes up to rest on Adam's nape. Shiro opens his eyes. "Will you marry me?"

Shock spreads through Adam's face like a slow-motion explosion.

"W-why?"

His voice is cracked, tired, hoary. "Because you're the only thing that keeps me grounded."

Adam stares at him wordlessly. And then his hand dips inside the pocket of his trousers. There is a small black box in there; when Adam takes off the lid, it reveals two silver rings. The metal is polished, but rough and uneven in colour. Their texture is familiar.

Shiro suddenly feels breathless. His heart is suddenly too light, too big for his chest. "Are those…"

"Yeah. Space trash. Just like you are."

Shiro looks into Adam's eyes. They're still angry. But inside, there's the same promise that he himself had given to Keith, obvious, clear as the frost in upper atmosphere that ruined his face, every single day, ever since he was seventeen, but never, ever spoken out loud: _to never give up on him._

"You are really, really trash, Shiro."

He clenches his wounded hand on Adam's nape, too weak and tired to do anything else. "I know."

It's Adam that kisses him. And then punches him in the chest hard, making him suck in a painful breath; and then climbs up on top of him, his nose tucked in the nook between Shiro's neck and jaw, the entire length of their bodies entwined closely together and pressing even closer.

"You're lucky you're alive. Oh, Christ. I would've… I love you. I love you."

Shiro closes his eyes.

The edge of possibility is pushed away one more inch, and his life continues.

It continues.


	10. You will be found

_part X: you will be found_

The frostbite is too bad for Shiro to walk out into the scorching summer sun, so he stays inside for a few days. From the widows of the apartment, he can see Keith hanging out idly around the block, disappearing like a kicked dog anytime Adam walks out for groceries.

"Should I tell him to go fuck himself?"

"Adam, he's not even sixteen."

"And he's still managed to attempt killing both of us. On two separate accounts. Also, have you _seen_ your face?"

"As a matter of fact, no." Shiro has no intention of looking in the mirror. The swollen, blistering skin under his fingers as he puts on the salve every day is enough for him. Adam snorts.

"Lucky you."

"If it were up to you, what would you do?" asks Shiro, and Adam pauses chopping the chives for the scrambled eggs to look at him. He considers the question for a moment.

"I'd probably tell him to go fuck himself."

"Adam."

"Don't ask questions you don't wants answers to."

Shiro sighs. "You're just being difficult for no reason."

"No, I'm being difficult for _all the possible reasons._ " Adam's knife resumes the chopping, neatly and effectively. "You're being forgiving for no reason at all. I can't stop you, but I'm not normalising this."

"Can't you see how bad this was for me? I barely kept my licence. They would've thrown _him_ in jail for the rest of his life." Shiro's face darkens. "If they wouldn't've shot him first."

"Then maybe that should've been a point of consideration _before_ he stole a military prototype."

"Adam, he took her off the ground. From the regular fighter runway. On his own. Do you even realise how near-impossible that would be even for me? The precision with the climb-"

"How many times does this kid have to screw up before you realise helping him is counter-productive?" Adam finishes off the chives, mixes them with the eggs, and looks up to take in Shiro's suddenly stilled expression. "So you can't let go. I get it. It's something of my specialty. But this? You almost lost everything. Some self-preservation should have kicked in by now."

"Adam."

"Here, have some eggs." The plates clink as Adam serves them both breakfast at the counter. Shiro comes up to sit with him, face still impassive, and picks up the fork with his graceless bandaged-up fingers. The pressure produces a kind of numb ache.

"I promised I would never give up on him."

Adam sighs. "Of course you did."

Shiro balances the fork in his fingers and carefully picks up the first mouthful. He succeeds in bringing it to his chin without an intermittent disaster, all in considerable silence from the other side of the table. "You're not going to call me names?"

Adam looks up to him from his own food. "And what would be the point? I know who you are, Shiro. You're the kind of person who will blindly, _stupidly,_ self-sacrificially follow one dumb promise. You pretended you hijacked a plane, for fuck's sake. It's not like you're gonna stop now."

Shiro nods. He has nothing to add; that is a completely fair assessment. They continue eating in silence for a long moment.

"So… what would you do if it were up to you?" asks Shiro. Adam throws him a sideways glance.

"That's almost too easy."

"I mean it. I'm not letting go of him. But I need to find a way to make him understand how serious that was. You're the teacher."

Adam squeezes his eyes tightly with a pained expression. "Fuck. Shiro, why do you always need to make it so difficult?" He breathes out through his nose, but when he opens his eyes again, they're decisive. "Alright. I'll tell you what you need to do. If that kid cares about you even a smidgeon as you _for some reason_ do for him, then he needs to see exactly what he's done to you."

Shiro nods, eyes softening. He reaches out across the table to brush his bandaged hands against Adam's; the ring is sitting there, a little silver promise from space. "That _is_ what I need to do. Thank you, Adam." His boyfriend shoots him a half-hearted annoyed glance. "Any ideas on how to do it?"

Adam sighs.

I'll just… bring him up here."

-/-

Through the window, Shiro can see their confrontation: Keith coming out warily from around the corner, eyes spitting fire at Adam's openly hostile expression. They exchange a couple of angry barbs before Keith shudders like he'd been struck to the chest; they stare each other down in tense silence, and then Adam turns back sharply and walk back into the building. After a long moment, and keeping wary distance, Keith follows.

He can hear their steps on the stairs. Adam says something in a cold voice, and –

"I didn't _want him_ to get involved!"

"Poor _you_." Those two words are filled with so much burning acid that a shiver goes down Shiro's spine. Then Adam opens the door, gives Shiro a nod, and leaves. Keith stands in the doorframe –

And his pupils shrink to pinpricks when he takes in Shiro's face and arms. His face goes white.

He takes a step back instinctively, and Shiro knows the boy will run away if he doesn't stop him. "Keith. Come on in."

Keith doesn't run, but doesn't move either. He's staring. His Adam's apple bobs uncertainly as he swallows.

"Did they do that to you?"

Shiro shakes his head. And Keith's mouth parts soundlessly, his shoulder coming up to his ears, as he's facing the raw, bloodied, blistering consequences of his mistakes.

He's a picture of such misery Shiro finally takes pity on him. "Come on in, please."

Keith obeys. The door clicks softly behind him. Shiro sits down at the table and pats a spot next to him; there are two cups of coffee there, the furthest Adam could get to a gesture of reconciliation. Keith approaches carefully, then crinkles his nose.

"I hate coffee."

Shiro chuckles. "That's rough. It comes in handy in military life."

"I still don't understand," says Keith quietly, sitting down, staring in the window in front of them. It's somehow easier, having this conversation shoulder to shoulder, a sense of complicity between them both. "You didn't have to. You _shouldn't have_. And now you got involved, even though it was all my fault, and got me out again! I could've handled that-"

"Keith. You could have been killed."

Keith turns his head to look straight into Shiro's blistering face, fury sparking in his eyes. "And this is better?!"

Shiro blinks very slowly. And the fury recedes, retreats back into shame and burning, scathing self-hatred.

"Yes. Yes, this is a million times better."

"I don't deserve this." It's just a helpless whisper. "I don't deserve you."

"Keith, there are two ways you can go about it." Shiro doesn't contradict him. He's probably right. But if people only got what they deserved, his own life would have been in shambles long ago. "You can feel sorry for yourself all you want, and tell yourself that you're a failure, and do nothing with the chance I'm giving you. Or you can take all this guilt and actually do something productive with it. Take that chance to be great."

Keith's face twists in sharp mockery. "How about I try out _good_ first."

"Yeah. Good is good. Baby steps."

Keith snorts – then hides his face in palms. "I don't know. I don't know how. I keep messing this up! And now you- your face-"

"Keith, it'll heal. I just needed you to see it."

"Why?! So I know how awful I am?! I know! I almost killed you, and your boyfriend, and almost crashed the Comet, and Holt told me about your trial! I _know_ I'm awful! And you still think I can be better than this, and I'm _trying,_ but how?!"

Shiro reaches out. His arm circles the narrow, shivering frame to rest across Keith's shoulders like a lifeline. He remembers Sebastian: warm, sturdy, steady. A rock.

"You're not awful. You're just lost. And I'm gonna be there for you until you find yourself."

Keith shudders under his touch, but doesn't shrink away.

They sit like that for a while. The morning is turning into the afternoon, and the sun turns to trace its crisp shadows around the apartment. It shines straight on the table, right into their eyes, but neither of them turns away.

"Keith… I'm not gonna lie to you. This was serious. You can't do things like that again. After this, no more stealing."

The teenager nods mutely. When he straightens his head, his neck presses against Shiro's arm; such a small, insignificant gesture of trust. Shiro feels an echo of a warm glow deep in his chest.

"I just wanted one ride."

"Keith-"

"I know, I know! I shouldn't have. I won't. But…" He purses his lips, and Shiro swallows his exasperation and lets him finish. _Patience._ "I won this flight for myself. I was the best. You said that."

"Until you sabotaged yourself by trying to take over the Minx."

Keith reddens and says nothing.

"That's exactly what I mean, Keith. You worked so hard, only to ruin it all because of an impulse."

Keith keeps silent for the whole of five seconds. Then, his voice stubborn: "I could've won that race for the Minx."

"Maybe, but were you asked to? What good is one won race when you need to physically fight your team for it?" Keith's tenacious eyes tell him that this is the wrong route. "And even if you did win, do you think it would've been worth sacrificing your Comet flight for?"

That hits home. Keith drops his gaze again. "Is she alright?"

"I don't know, Keith. I can't fly until September."

The horrified expression of the teenager causes something odd to stir in his chest. Everyone else thought it was an easy way out. Two months' worth of grounding for hijacking a plane was a laughable punishment. But for Shiro – even if it was temporary, even if it was just two months, even if it was _nothing_ compared to losing the Comet and rank forever – it was like taking away his legs. His thumbs. His _breath._ There was nothing more terrible than not being able to fly. And there was a strange, relieved satisfaction in finally seeing that sentiment understood, without explanation, just as innately as it was etched into every single fibre of his own being.

What did Adam say? _Heir apparent._

"I- I'm sorry. I'm sorry!"

Shiro squeezes his painful bandaged hand on Keith's shoulder. To his disbelief, his voice falters. "Just… make it worth it."

The feeling of loss and hopelessness is twisting his heart as Keith speaks quietly, voice choked, spent, pushed to the wall and at a complete loss.

"I-I just don't know how."

Shiro thinks about his life. His own failures.

They are uniquely alike, this kid and he, to the point of fault; differing circumstances, differing chances, but the same talent and the same dream at the very heart of it. He's luckier, steadier, older, with a string of successes and kind people to guide him, and yet he's erred still. But if he were to distil the things that got him out, that essence of the breath of wind that came and went, bringing those rare, rare moments of clarity, pointing him towards the right choice… then maybe he could still save Keith from himself.

"Patience yields focus."

Keith's face crinkles in mild confusion. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that when you don't see a way out, or when you're hurt or confused… " Shiro's voice is steady. "You need to be patient. With yourself _and_ others. And once you're thinking clear, you'll find the way. But you have to give yourself time."

 _You have it. There's nothing ticking in your bones. Take your time, Keith._

Keith turns the phrase around in his mouth, repeating it soundlessly. He looks so immensely focused on something inside himself that Shiro can't help but smile.

"Just… think about it."

Keith nods. Then his jaw sets in a familiar, stubborn, decisive expression, and Shiro could laugh out loud at the sudden joy that spikes inside him, the same joy of watching a jet taking flight.

He did it. He _did it._ He's saved him.

"That's it," says Keith curtly. "I'll never let you down again."

Shiro looks straight into the radiant Sun that burns into Keith's dark eyes, firing them up to shining, bright blue, his chest lighting up with that overwhelming joy and relief, and smiles so wide his blistered face hurts.

-/-

Adam calls in the afternoon. "Is he gone yet?"

"All clear." Shiro is not able to stop a huge smile that colours his words, and he can almost see Adam's single disapproving eyebrow raising at him. "You can come home now."

"I take it that the prodigal kleptomaniac has returned to the fold."

"He's good. We're both good."

There's a sigh in the speaker. "Well, that's the end of months of misery, I guess. Do you want anything from the shops?"

Shiro eyes the untouched coffee left on the table by Keith. "Uh. Some tea, perhaps?"

"Ugh." Adam makes a disgusted sound, but doesn't protest. Shiro grins.

-/-

The summer is torturously long. His hands and face heal eventually, but it's much more difficult to deal with being grounded than he ever expected. He buries himself in the simulators every night for a week until Andrews discovers him in there at three in the morning, and after that the access codes are changed. He's definitely too old to sulk now, but it doesn't stop him.

Instead, Iverson has him run zero-G drills again. It's a welcome distraction. (He tries to thank the commander for the bailout at the disciplinary meeting, but the man pointedly ignores him; after a while, Shiro lets it go, and instead sends an industrial-size crate of chocolate to his office.) He's confused about the timing of the training – he can't fly, the Comet's development is halted until December, there is no immediate mission he can prepare for – until the bombshell is dropped by the end of July that he and Sam Holt are being assigned for a month's service on the Lunar Space Station. That puts new energy into him.

"So… when?" asks Keith breathlessly, when they stop over for a drink in the shadow of the lone vertical rock, in the liminal zone where the mountains meet the desert. Their shirts are both drenched in sweat, but Shiro has set himself the goal at the end of the range, and there's still miles to run.

"The entire October. Should be fun."

Keith drinks some water, and then pours the rest straight onto his head. His black mop of hair sticks to his face, drenched in both water and sweat. "My birthday's in October."

"I'll get you a space rock." Shiro looks him over. "You'd be cooler with a different haircut."

"Why don't you mind your own," sounds a biting reply, and Shiro chuckles.

"Do you still cut each other's hair in the garrison? My friend Al did mine. And Carolina's."

Keith glances at him with bottomless contempt. "Did you throw tea parties as well?"

"Not… _tea_ , no."

"Some teacher you are."

"I was only a little bit older than you are now."

They resume their run, their shadows long in the ground. The desert is deathly quiet, the only noise made by their shoes kicking up the dust. In the east, over the mountainside, the sky is already darkening into deep, solemn blue; the first starts are beginning to flicker on the open firmament.

"What's space like?" asks Keith, staring up. Shiro thinks about it for a moment, trying to find words to properly place the overwhelming, awe-filled sensation.

"It's… in three dimensions. I know it seems obvious, but that's what really gets you in zero-G. You can't tell your up from down. It's incredibly freeing. When you leap, you don't fall."

Keith speeds up. Shiro thinks there's so much hidden strength in that kid; so lean and lanky, with long narrow limbs, but resilient and swift. He stays behind, watching Keith go faster and faster.

And then he jumps, he leaps, with his arms reaching out as if they were grasping for the stars themselves –

Then he tumbles into the dirt.

Shiro reaches him, offering a hand up. The disturbed desert dust flies around them in a brown nebula, specks of dirt landing on Keith's pitch-black hair like constellations, like galaxies. "You're gonna fly one day."

Keith's lip twitches, and he takes the hand.

-/-

Shiro comes back late and goes straight into the shower. He's leaving a light-brown trail of desert dust behind him.

Adam raises his glance from the book. "The kid again?"

"Yeah."

Adam just sighs. Shiro walks behind him on the couch and plants a kiss on his soft brown hair. "You smell good."

"You smell like a sweaty sock."

"We should have a night in."

"Mhm." Adam's fingers reach out behind his head, keeping Shiro close despite his words. "Shower first. Then we talk."

"As soon as you let me go."

"Never."

Shiro closes his arms around him from behind. Adam jolts like he'd been pricked by a needle.

"Ugh! Armpits! Armpits!"

Shiro laughs so much he's still chuckling about it in the shower. He's twenty two, engaged, on track for his second space mission, and even if he is stuck on the ground for the time being, he'll fly soon - and he's gained a friend, an accomplice, an heir. He's saved him. And his dream is free from the grasp of the disease, his timeline extends, and he's got time – he's got time to have a night in, in that long summer nights, to pull his fiancé into his arms and claim him for his own, make him melt under his hands and lips, meticulously unravel everything that Adam is and leave his own signature there, a mark of teeth and reddened skin, feel the muscles spasming helplessly under his fingers –

Adam walks into the bathroom, wearing a small hopeful smile, and all raunchy thoughts leave Shiro's mind at once for a little shining second.

He steps into the shower, and Shiro scoops him into his arms – and just holds on tight, his chest expanding with overwhelming tenderness.

Come to think about it, it's the happiest he's been in a long time.

-/-

"Hop in, Keith."

"A hoverbike?" The kid eyes him distrustfully. "Where's your car gone?"

"Maybe I can't pilot a proper ship, but they're going to need more than that to keep me from flying." Shiro tosses him a second helmet. "You ever rode one of those?"

He could laugh at the _literal sparkles_ that light up in Keith's eyes. "I stole a speeder once."

"Well, this one's legal, so try not to crash it."

Keith climbs in front of him triumphantly, taking hold of the handlebars. But he pauses, just for a second, before he presses the gas pedal all the way to the floor.

"Hey, Shiro?"

It almost alarms him, that sudden change of tone. "What is it, Keith?"

"You're pretty alright."

He closes his eyes momentarily. Then, before he has a chance to answer with any of those happy, sappy comments that Adam would absolutely roll the hell out of his eyes at, he's pushed back by the sudden impetus of a wild start – and they fly.

-/-

A month after the Comet's hijacking, Adam and he go to dinner at his mother's.

He hasn't seen her for a while. Shirogane Shizuka is her usual tough self, short-haired and no-nonsense, and they embrace tightly before Shiro turns back to Adam.

"Mum, we're here to tell you something. We're-"

"My commiserations," says Shizuka easily, eyes flickering to Adam's with warm humour. "It'll take a whole lot more than a pair of rings to get this one pinned down."

Adam snorts, covering his embarrassment with dry wit. "I tried to make myself clearer, but apparently they don't sell finger-sized handcuffs."

Shiro clears his throat. "What I'm _trying_ to say is that we got engaged, mum."

"I got that, love. Come on in, I made ramen for you."

They walk into the kitchen, and Shiro's gaze is drawn immediately to the electro-stimulators on his mother's wrists and forearms. As he glances down, there's another pair at her ankles. He's trying not to notice the slight shaking of her hands as she pours the broth into the already-prepared bowls of meat and noodles.

"So, Takashi," she says pointedly as they sit down to the meal. "When were you going to tell me about your trial?"

Shiro blushes slightly. "It wasn't a big deal."

Shizuka's gaze courses to Adam. "Wasn't it?"

Adam swallows a mouthful of noodles in an obvious attempt to stall for time. He shoots Shiro a panicked glance. "It… ended up insignificant, in a larger scheme of things."

"Alright, I'll say that again. Takashi's ship took off without authorisation, and then the next day all garrison commanders had a high-profile secret meeting." Shizuka's eyes drill into Shiro with calm, knife-sharp intelligence. "Anything you want to tell me now, son?"

Shiro opens his hands palm-up in a universal what-can-I-do gesture. "They've blown this out of proportions. It was just a minor issue. I'll be back in the air by September."

His mother stares back at him with a very unimpressed expression.

"His student hijacked the ship," says Adam after a short silence. "He took the blame. The garrison covered it up under a bullshit pretence because they can't afford to lose Shiro, and Shiro and the kid come in a package now. Is there anything else you'd like to know?"

Shiro sucks in a surprised breath. His mother looks just as shocked for a split second, and then she grins a wide, beaming smile.

"I like you, son-in-law."

" _Adam,_ " Shiro says insistently. His fiancé shrugs.

"Oh, please. She already knew enough to put the pieces together."

"Still-"

"It's alright, Takashi." His mother pats his hand, and Shiro thinks he sees melancholy under the sparkling humour. "I spoke to Sam Holt. He has a very high opinion of you."

Shiro blushes again. "He's a good man."

"And now the two of you are going to space?"

Shiro's gaze flickers to Adam, but he appears unaffected. "Yeah. It's just a routine assignment to the space station, but it's still extraterrestrial, so…"

"So he's bursting at the seams, that's what he's trying to say." Adam's voice is dry, but his eyes are warm. "If he makes commander before I'm even a pilot, I'm going to be annoyed."

"Which space station? Lunar?" asks Shizuka, and Shiro nods. "Watch out for the crates in the meeting room. You think they'll hold you when you sit down, but they won't."

Shiro stares at her incredulously. "You've been to LSS?"

"What, you think I spent my entire garrison career in the secretariat? Think again, son. I know comms are not quite as exciting as being a fighter pilot, but we get around."

"You've been to space?" Adam opens his eyes wide at her. "Shiro, why am I the only person at this table that hasn't been to space?"

"It's a family tradition." Shizuka smiles as Shiro is busy putting together the piece of his early memories. _Mum's leaving. She'll be back in just four weeks!_ "Don't worry, Adam. A military man like yourself will fit right in."

Shiro rubs his temples after a long moment of deliberations. "Why aren't you just telling me those things, mum, instead of just assuming I know?"

"Didn't we have that argument three years ago?" Shizuka's eyes are shining. "I told you point-blank I used to be an astroexplorer. Not as successful as your grandfather, perhaps, but I was."

"I didn't…" Shiro trails off. He feels like a child again, scooped into her arms straight from the depths of pretend-space, paper plane in hand. He swallows that feeling down. "It doesn't matter. I'm glad to know now."

"So you went out there… but then you stopped." Adam speaks that slowly, with a certain feeling of wonderment, eyes trailing Shiro's. He sounds thoughtful. "What made you stop?"

"He did." Shizuka looks at his son with fondness; and yet again, there's an undercurrent of melancholy in her voice. "I was missing my son growing up. It was either space or him."

Adam nods, a little crease appearing in between his brows. He looks like he's wrestling with an unexpected problem, with the solution inches away from him. Shiro wants to take his shoulders and shake him out of it. _This is not what father said._ He doesn't know why this turn of conversation makes him so unsettled, but then he looks at his mother's hands, trembling ever so slightly despite the electro-stimulators, and he remembers.

It wasn't him. Or it was partially him, but Shiro knows himself well enough to understand his mother's motivations, as if through a creased funhouse mirror. She'd run herself into the ground before, that was why her marriage fell apart. It couldn't have just been the family that made her stop.

It was the onset of the disease.

Staring into his mother's hands, her melancholic eyes, the shadows of her bitter surrender to Becker's muscular dystrophy surrounding her entire frame just as tight as the electro-stimulators surround her limbs, Shiro feels like he's looking into the face of the future.


	11. Rise up

_part XI: rise up_

The year passes quickly, punctuated by short bursts of intensity. He goes to space with Sam, and brings back more space rubble and some rocks; he gives one of them to Keith, and the teenager holds it with such a sense of wonderment Shiro is brought back to his first moment with the Comet. He returns to flying her, too, and it brings such a raw joy he's almost floored by it; he walks around her corridors, smiling like a lovestruck idiot, until his comms flare up with boarding status confirmation and he needs to hurry back to the cockpit. They're serious around her now. He's not surprised at all.

With the development halted until the end of the year, Sam and he take to finding another pilot for her – as per the admiral's instructions. They both half-heartedly attempt to choose any other pilot before finally settling on Keith. Iverson almost has a fit when he finds out. But this time, they do it the legal way: the simulator scores speak for themselves, and Keith has withdrawn far enough from all his classmates not to cause any more potential trouble. So Shiro gets his heir, and another crate of chocolate lands on Iverson's desk, though this time it takes somehow longer to placate him.

A change comes over Keith when he's in the Comet. Shiro feels odd watching him; it feels as if his own emotions are laid bare and out of his own body, ripe for him to examine. They're all there: the joy, the excitement, the overwhelming possessiveness. They don't speak much in the cockpit, aside from flight commands, but there is a steady undercurrent of joy that comes from sharing this kind of instinctive, raw understanding.

In six and a half years, he'll be leaving her in good hands.

Adam enters the teaching stream, but after a recommendation from Iverson, Team Minx is kept as fighters as well. The double specialisation makes him busier than Shiro can ever remember him being. He gets cranky easily, and all but lives in the barracks again; one night Shiro searches for him until two in the morning, only to find all three of them in Chris' barrack room, asleep on the floor on top of each other, books on teaching methodology scattered around them. He lets them be.

For a while, he struggles to acknowledge the ache it produces in him: he's got Keith, Sam, and Iverson, Adam is still close, and he is not alone by any means. But when he stumbles upon the Team Minx for the second time, this time holed up in their own apartment, huddled around Adam's coffee express like a waterhole, his heart clenches in a short burst of pain – and Shiro finally realises what he's running away from. He forces himself to face the truth head-on.

He misses being a part of a team.

When was the last time he trained together with others, in a small tight-knit group? That would have been his first trip to space. The assignment with Sam was to a station, not a ship, and the dynamic between the people there was different; he misses Dreamboat, for the first time wishing he'd spent more time as a cadet. He misses the first Comet crew, Sue and Jan and Bing. And when he's alone, Adam sleeping or studying or drilling, he misses Sebastian so badly that his chest aches, throat tight with the guilt of it.

So it comes as a shock when, one day, as he's boarding the Comet, a flurry of familiar voices reaches him from behind, and he's suddenly being pounced on, three bodies slamming him to the ground –

"Shiro! Guess who's taking us to space!"

He's lying on his back on the ground, pressed down with the weight of three warm young bodies, his breath knocked out of him by a tight, violent hug. He lets out more of a wheeze than an actual word. "Carolina?"

Carolina, Al, and Annika stare at him from up close, grinning. Carolina pokes him in the chest. "Three years, but we finally caught up with you."

Annika winks at him. "Hey, Dreamboat. You needed a co-pilot?"

" _What-_ "

"He doesn't know," says Al, excitement in his quivering voice. "Carrie and I asked the commander if we could tell him."

Shiro blinks wildly. His heart is beating uncontrollably, singing in joy he's already feeling without understanding it. "Tell me what?"

"You're taking us to Mars, Shiro! With the Comet!"

Shiro closes his eyes. They're leaking anyway. He's not making an attempt to stand up or shrug them off his chest, just laying down and soaking up the warm, solid weight pinning him to the ground, the all-but-forgotten sense of kinship. Three years.

"I've missed you guys _so_ much."

"Of course you did, idiot. You spent the best years of your life with us." Carolina tousles his hair. "Aside from going to space and all. Hey, remember when someone covered Dreamboat with talc? Turns out it was Annika all along."

"I was trying really hard to get your attention." The girl – _the woman, they're all twenty-six now_ – is grinning, same suggestive smile he remembers being confused by, when he was still seventeen and innocent and hopeful. "Guess I finally did it."

Shiro just lets this moment last, in all its shining, relieved brilliance. _I've got my team back. And we're going to Mars? Together?_

He's not innocent anymore, but he's still hopeful.

-/-

And now they're both equally busy.

Shiro doesn't notice it at first. Sanda confirms with him that he has been assigned as a mission commander for the Mars cruise next year, along with the best team of this year's graduates, and no-one at all mentions the joy that _those very particular graduates_ spark on the youngest garrison commander's face. He throws himself into his work without reservations, and it feels so natural, so damn _easy_ to just slide back into the team dynamic, to resume his control over the ship and crew, to spend day and night in the Comet, hang out in the engine room, sneak things not meant to be carried on a spaceship... Carolina and he smuggle a deck of cards. Al – his Playstation. Annika triumphantly brings along a rainbow woollen blanket.

"I think you're missing the point of smuggled cargo," says Al, raising a puzzled eyebrow. "It's meant to _distract_ you from the mission?"

Annika opens the tap on the ship tank, gets some water on her fingers, and sprays her precious bright-coloured cargo, all whilst maintaining direct eye contact. "Oh, don't be such a _wet blanket_ about this."

Shiro has a very sudden coughing fit. Annika grins at him, shamelessly, and Al just rolls his eyes.

They get along with Keith fine. The kid is annoyed that he's getting left behind (what's he not getting annoyed with?), but Shiro leaves him with his mantra of patience and focus, and it seems to be working. His fiery temper still causes occasional problems – mostly intermittent headbutting with people not willing to leave him alone – but it's nowhere near as bad as it used to be, especially with the Comet still open for his training. Even with his rapidly shrinking time, Shiro refuses to give up the hours he spends on Keith. Not only because they're a welcome getaway from his drills and mission preparation, but also because they're _important._ He can feel through his skin how badly the kid needs him there, the security of him and the Comet; and he can see his effort paying off almost in real time. Keith is less frantic, more focused. He spends the summer before his seventeenth birthday working at a city scrapyard; and then, with a deafening noise of revving engine, he rolls out in front of Shiro's block in a used hoverbike.

"Race you to the Lone Rock, old man!"

And then he's gone. Shiro curses and hastily gets on his own bike. Adam is asleep upstairs; he pushes away the vague feeling of guilt as he kickstarts the engine and flies off, Keith's silhouette already five blocks away.

-/-

Then –

Three months before the Mars mission, he notices a slight tremor on his left pinky finger.

He stares at it for so long it seems like the only thing on the planet.

In the universe.

And, the longer he spends in that surgically bathroom of their place, the longer he's staring at his hand with unmoving, dry eyes, making sure that he can't control it, that it _is_ a tremor, the more it _is_ the only thing that ever existed: without it, everything else goes away. Without his hands…

He's twenty-four.

Six years. He had six more years.

Too bad, Shiro thinks with cold, numb mind, that no-one told the disease about it.

A helpless fury rises somewhere deep in his gut, thick black sludge of rage and despair, pouring from the deepest parts of himself and rising to his lungs, threatening to drown him in his own ire – it's not right, it's not _fair,_ he _knew_ it was coming, he lived on the fastest lane possible, he did everything he could to make sure he'd fit all his life within that torturously strict timeline, ten years, he'd told himself, _ten years_ and it's still cut short?!

Four – what kind of monster just gives him four –

 _This isn't happening –_

No. No. _This is just the beginning,_ says the memory of Sebastian, and Shiro clenches his fists so tight that they're still, immobile, steady, he's still steady. He can work on it. He can _stop_ it. For as long as it takes for Keith to take over the Comet, to become a pilot on his own. This is just another obstacle thrown in front of him. He's Commander Takashi Shiragane of the Comet, the youngest astronaut of the Earth, the youngest commander, the record-holder and champion of the Galaxy Garrison. He does _not_ back away.

He does _not._

He picks his mother's number.

She's more shocked than he is. But she deals with it briskly. The garrison doctors see him the next day, and after a comprehensive scan of his entire body they confirm the onset of Becker's muscular dystrophy. Earliest detectable stages. It's a small relief in the sea of horror and helpless rage that he's drowning in, and he's holding onto it like a lifeline. Even though it's so sharp it cuts his fingers open as he hangs on for dear life. His dear, dear life.

He's lucky. His obsession has saved him, and it's not yet too late to stabilise his condition. There are medications he can begin taking now. There are exercises particularly for his hands and arms that he needs to start doing. It will come back to normal for a time, and he should use that time wisely – and at this point Shiro turns off, tunes out the doctor's calm, professional tone, because otherwise he will bang his fist on the table and scream his lungs out that he _has,_ he _has_ used his time wisely, he's done everything humanly possible to make it count, he's chased the clock, he's found an heir, he's gone to space, he'll go again –

 _and yet he's still being punished, it's still not enough, when is it enough?!_

He swallows his rage down, back to the big black pit in his stomach. "I'm going on a mission in three months, doctor. I need to be sure I'm in a peak condition. For my safety and others."

"Well, you are." The physician gives him a look over. "It might save you yet. But you have to be careful not to lose your muscle mass when you're in zero-G, otherwise it might hasten the onset."

Shiro nods. It won't be happening.

This _won't_ be the last time he goes.

The three months pass in a flurry. He barely remembers anything from the summer. Carolina, Al, and Annika are the only people that know, and only because he's spending twenty-four hours a day with them, he can't hide his exercises and his medications; they speak in hushed whispers the day he tells them, and Shiro gets sick to his stomach at it. He can't keep it bottled up too long. So he screams at them, his voice so cold and sharp and quivering that he's barely recognising it, and he's alone, so blindingly alone, and he's failing as a commander and as a pilot and as a _man –_

Carolina gives him a tight hug. They all do. He hangs on limply in their arms, his knees weak, his throat blocked with too much emotion, too much helplessness, too much grief. When he apologises, they unanimously tell him to go fuck himself, and just hold on.

They go to space, Sam and Matt Holt tagging along to be dropped off at the space station for an engineering project on recyclables. The boy has just turned nineteen, and he's already one of the brightest scientific minds in the garrison. It's set to be his first zero-G flight, and listening to his excited chatter, Shiro is reminded of the first time he's brought the Comet up through the edge of the atmosphere. Back then, he was running away from the disease all the same. He just thought he'd have more time…

He'd set his timeline so short and it was shorter still. His head feels like it could explode with the mounting _injustice_ of it. He'd known – he'd prepared – he did everything he could, and still, and still –

He can't wait to leave the Earth behind. The native gravity weighs too heavy on his spine, in his chest, in the pit of his stomach. He longs for the freedom of the endless open space, where there's no falling, just flying.

Mars is red, dusty, like the desert around the garrison. Like the desert Keith grew up on, the one they've crossed in their runs and races and flights. Shiro scoops some of the dust for him.

They come back for Sam and Matt, and – somehow surprisingly – they get assigned for another month around the Moon. It screws up his medication schedule. He trains as best he can, but the imperceptible tremor in his left pinky finger returns, and there's nothing he can do about it. It's slowly poisoning him from the inside.

Then, finally, they get back. The quarantine and physicals last for a while, and the mass of the Earth hangs on his bones too heavily, but for the first time, Shiro is anxious to get out as soon as possible. He needs to take his medication. Finally, finally he's discharged –

Adam is on the other side of the decontamination chamber. Shiro's heart drops to his stomach as he sees his eyes.

Adam wordlessly extends his arm, and when Shiro turns his palm up – the pinky is still trembling – he drops into it a small bottle of violet pills.

"When were you going to tell me?"

Shiro's right hand is steady as he opens the bottle and takes two pills at the same time. He swallows them down, ignoring the heat in his stomach. Burning, scorching, scathing, guilt and shame and helpless rage at the disease's unflinching march.

Adam's face is very still. "Answer me, Shiro. I had _two months_ to think about it. I don't have much patience left."

"I didn't want to…" Shiro trails off. Al walks past them; he sees the look on their faces and gives Shiro a short squeeze on the shoulder before walking off. Adam's eyes trail after him.

"They knew, didn't they? Of course they knew. They had to. You're too good of a leader to hide something that important from _the people you're closest too._ "

"Adam, let's go home first."

Adam's lips clench to a white taut line. "I'm staying in the barracks tonight. I'm busy."

Shiro stares at him, feeling as if the natural Earth-atmosphere was suddenly devoid of any oxygen at all. "You're… busy."

"I have the first batch of my exams next week. Or did you forget?" Adam closes his eyes for a split second. "He forgot. Sure. Why not. Wish I could."

Shiro clenches his left hand on the bottle, steadying the pinky finger, and extends his right to reach out for Adam. The man stills under his touch, his taut lips shivering as Shiro dares step closer. He's not embracing him, but they stand chest to chest, just an inch away –

Adam's voice is tight. "Why are you doing this?"

Shiro flashes a pale smile. "Because I'm space trash, and awful at this."

"It's not just- Shiro, I have to go. I can't get dragged into this, not right now." His words are all but rejection; but Adam's not stepping away. His cheek is leaning into Shiro's hand almost against his own will. Shiro hesitates, but doesn't let him go. If he wants to, he can –

"Your disease." He can barely hear those two words, quivering in the air. "How bad is it now?"

"I'm okay," Shiro says with the peace he's not feeling. The pitch-black darkness from the pit in his stomach is rising, _he's going away._ "Peak physical form, if I remember about my exercises and meds. I still have time."

"How long?"

"One or two years."

"So you were hoping to hide it for _this long-_ "

Something breaks in him. His heart, maybe. It was too heavy in Earth-gravity.

"I wasn't. I didn't know what to do. I still don't. I- telling you makes it _real,_ Adam, and I can't handle that. I'm… " He squeezes his eyes shut. "I'm running out of time. _I'm running out of time._ "

A hand closes around his shoulder and pushes him closer. He can feel the sturdy, cold shape of the engagement ring pressed into his back. "You idiot."

That's all the invitation he needs. He embraces Adam tightly, burying his face into the light-brown hair; Adam wraps himself around him without any space in between them, pushing his face into Shiro's chest, his arm so taut around the shoulders as if he were grasping at something precious thought the water. "Fuck this. Fuck all of this. Let's go home, Shiro."

"Your exams-"

"I'll text Chris I'll study at ours. I'm not letting you go when you're like this. Oh, Shiro, why are you always doing this to yourself?"

"I'm trying not to," he whispers, his throat tight. "I prepared. I did all I could, Adam, I tried so hard, _why is it still happening?!_ "

"I don't know. I'd take it away from you if I could. Even now. Even after those two fucking months, if you could just give that disease to me instead, I'd do it in a heartbeat. I love you, Shiro. Even when you don't tell me things."

"I'm sorry."

"You undo me." The voice in his chest is quiet and bitter. "I promised myself I just wanted answers. To give you hell for not telling me. But I love you, _I love you,_ and it just takes a second of you and it's all gone from my fucking mind, _I'm_ all gone, there's just… you."

He just shakes his head helplessly, his nose in Adam's hair. "I… you're scaring me."

"Good! Good, I'm scaring myself!" The laugh that comes out of Adam's mouth is crippled, throttled against his space uniform. "I should go."

Shiro holds on to him in that oxygenless atmosphere, trying to imagine his life without the focal point of Adam. He's let him down again. Again, and again, and again. But he's exhausted, and running out of time, and _his left pinky won't stop shaking,_ and there's just one person he trusts with his heart right now, and if he can't trust him, then – then what's the point of coming back to Earth at all –

"Please don't."

Adam shudders in his arms. "I won't. Let's go home."

-/-

He can't sleep in the night.

Something is breaking in his fingers. And he can't hold them still, they're trembling uncontrollably; maybe he could have fixed it once, back when he could still trust his steady grasp, when he held it fast, confident to never let go. But now –

"Adam," he whispers in the dark room. The hand on his chest moves slightly, tracing the echoes of his heart through the naked skin.

"Yes, Shiro?"

"How do I fix this?"

Silence is his only answer for a long while. Shiro stares into the black ceiling. Funny, how when he was on the Moon, looking up into the small contours of his small planet, that was all he could think about – this flat. This ceiling. Adam, sleeping under it.

"Stay," whispers Adam, and the hand on his heart presses flat to his skin. "What your mother did. Just… for once in your life, just stay."

Shiro rests his left hand on top of Adam's. He lets him feel the tremor of it. The hand under his quivers, but then closes around his in a firm grip.

Everything that he is. Everything that he will lose, once the disease claims him.

He'd have to give it all away.

A decision rises above him like a black hulking mass of an asteroid in deep space, a course change imminent, but he can't take it right now. He can't. For the first time in his life, he faces an obstacle, two routes clear in front of him –

And Shiro stalls.


	12. The White Paladin

_part XII: the White Paladin_

The tremor goes away after a few days of medication. Shiro's relief is overwhelming.

He spends his post-space vacation watching Adam work. His fiancé growls at him toothlessly, but allows him to lay his own head on his lap as they're curled up on the couch. Papers and books land on his face immediately, but he doesn't move; instead, he drifts in a vague state between meditation and sleep, eyes closed, the weight of unmade decision worrying at his mind.

He's never been indecisive before. Everything, even the toughest choice, was an issue only as long as he couldn't see it. The choice to hear about his disease. The choice to take the blame for Keith. And, years, years ago, when the world still made sense and the idea of _justice_ still existed outside his own head, the choice to invite Adam for dinner and see what would happen…

His terrifying words sound in his mind over and over again. _You undo me._ He's always known to some extent how imbalanced things were between them; on better days, Adam seemed blissfully resigned to the fact that he would always melt away in Shiro's hands. On worse, Shiro got cake to the face. They always clashed about it, all the way until the engagement. But these words… they rang of bitterness and frustration he did not expect.

Maybe he should have. Maybe he would have seen them coming, had he not been lost in that endless see of rage and spite at the mounting injustice of the disease, the first of its kind that he could not fix. Maybe he should have seen Adam's efforts to bring him closer for what they were: a cry for balance. For control. For more trust –

 _When were you going to tell me?_

 _You undo me._

He's trying to comprehend the depths of failure that the disease has thrown him into, but soon he realises he's wasting time. Even if he doesn't understand it by reason, he instinctively knows that Adam's solution, _his mother's solution_ is the only one that would ever save them: stop being an astronaut. Stay. Plant his feet firmly on the ground next to Adam's, hand in ringed hand, marry, and stay.

Give away everything he is now, to avoid losing everything later -

He half-heartedly contemplates confiding in Keith about that, but then decides against it. He can imagine all too well the horror he'd see on the kid's face. Stop flying? He could just as well give up his lungs. His heart shrinks at the very thought of being trapped in Earth-gravity forever.

But it will happen. It was always going to happen. He's just refused to think about it until now.

Is it really that much to give away, now that he knows it's just a year or two? Compared to a lifetime of security, of trust, of a man who lived through a hell of Shiro's own making and still kept coming back, in feats of ordinary, tight-lipped, cynical martyrdom to put his own stunts to shame –

The scale tips, the bulk of the asteroid on his way tilts to reveal a way through, but Shiro's still not choosing a path.

"Let's go to Japan," he says one evening, and Adam barely looks up from a huge holo-map splayed at the kitchen table.

"Right now, or can I finish this chart first?"

Shiro gives him a pale smile. "You feel like right now? It's not like we can't afford it."

"Would love to, Shiro, but some of us have pilotage exams next week." After a while, Adam raises his head to look at him, a shadow of concern in his eyes. "If you want to see your dad, just go on your own."

"The point is to go with you."

The concern gives way to irritation. "I can't! Stop being a nudge!" There are dark rings around his eyes, and Shiro's heart drops to his stomach like an anvil as he notices Adam's hands are shaking slightly.

His expression must change, because Adam sighs.

"It's just too much coffee."

Shiro blinks his nightmare away. "Sure. I'm sorry about this trip. We'll go after your exams are done."

"Mhm." He's already bent back down over the holo-map. Shiro watches him for a long moment. The displayed area is the airspace over North America and the Pacific Ocean, with an intricate web of flight corridors towards upper atmosphere. He knows that map like the back of his own hand.

"Which route are you taking?"

Adam flickers his wrist wordlessly, and a red line reveals itself in the tangle of blue and white. Rising from the garrison base, it crosses over the length of former California and Arizona, looping over land and then coming back out to the ocean.

"That's the Addison Loop," says Shiro, and Adam casts him a surprised glance.

"The what?"

"The Addison Loop. From General Addison in the twenty-fifties. It crosses over the five flight zones from WW3, and you need to check in at each, because there are still military bases there. A massive pain to fly through."

Adam narrows his eyes at the chart. "Wait a second. I see three."

"No, five. You're bordering East Asian airspace there," Shiro makes a vague gesture at one end of the line, "and you're forgetting about the Pacific islands. There's a duty to check in there too. Sam and I almost declared war when we forgot that once."

Adam curses and makes a hasty note. "How has no-one told us that before?!"

"It's supposed to be a tripwire for the examinees, I think."

"Oh, for fuck's- thank you, Shiro. Otherwise we'd be at war with Guam by next week."

Shiro flashes a grin. Adam smiles back, absent-mindedly, and then his glance focuses back on Shiro's face. "That's… the most attention you've ever paid to my exams ever."

Shiro's smile falters. "Am I that bad?"

"No, I guess not." Adam looks down. "You're just… not there. And when you are, you're usually wrapped in your own drama of the highest order, so I'm not really expecting you to?" He clears his throat against Shiro's silent eyes. "What I'm trying to say is, _it's nice to have you._ Around. In my boring cadet life."

Shiro feels hot. His failure is clouding his brain like a red Martian sandstorm. "Adam, I'm so sorry."

"I said it's _nice._ Don't… oh, Shiro." Adam stands up and crosses the room to lean over the couch. "Don't make me waste any more time kissing you better. _Exams._ "

Shiro grips his hand wordlessly, trying to communicate the shame and guilt he cannot put into words. He's missing it. He's missing _life._ His military vocabulary isn't broad enough for this.

Neither is Adam's. He leans in to kiss him, but pulls away before Shiro can take hold of him. "I love you, but if we start getting down to this thing now, I won't be able to make it to Chris' by five, and we booked a double sim. So stop sulking."

Shiro lets him go. "No Saba?"

Adam rolls his eyes. "Boyfriend or something. Fucking great timing, too."

Shiro gives him a pale smile. "I guess you wouldn't know how that is, huh?"

"No idea. Shut up, Shiro. I'm trying to memorise half of the sky here."

Shiro obeys, and instead watches him silently from the couch, trying to make sense of the knot that squeezes his stomach tighter and tighter.

He's no good at this life.

-/-

His mother buys him electro-stimulators for his twenty-fifth birthday. He wears them from that day onwards. Their regular, periodic discharges are a cathartic kind of pain – a physical embodiment of the fixation that his mind has been producing for years now, ever since he found out about the disease. Every once in a few hours, the reality of the muscular dystrophy gets physical. For half a second, he's in pain – and then he can let go, ritual spent, all the attention allocated to the disease given away. He can finally focus.

He spends more time with Keith now, partly because he's making up for the unexpectedly lost month, and partly because it's soothing in an unexplainable way. The kid doesn't know about his disease. But he clearly knows everything about hurt and loss; and as much as Shiro's patience and gentleness is a balm on Keith's aching soul, Keith's raw emotionality and impulse-driven nature are a relief to be around for _him._ A reminder that the world was never fair much before his disease struck. A reminder that he doesn't _have to_ take it in his stride. That rebellion, too, is a natural instinct.

And, as he looks at the back of Keith's hoverbike wheezing in between the sharp rocks, he marvels at how completely his protégé inhabits his own skin. How there is not an ounce of him hidden away, even if forced to coat itself with indifference; it's there, flaring up to the surface with the smallest prod. And how, in all that raw truth, what Shiro sees as clear as a day is a mirror image of his own soul: arms reaching out into the sky in bottomless longing, and joy, joy, fierce joy of flight.

And – suddenly Shiro feels like there's nothing to lose. The sun is setting over the desert in a golden spectacle, the wind swishing through his ears deafeningly, the damned kid is _in front of him,_ and he's not going to just go and let him win.

He speeds up. There's no disease, no sadness, no complicated feelings, all get left behind with the engine fumes.

Just flight.

He overtakes Keith at the turn, laugher bubbling up in his throat at the kid's expression. "Come on, catch up!" He goes even faster, faster than he should with just the glasses for the wind, the wings of the hoverbike twisting to almost graze the ground in a sharp turn between the rocks. No obstacles too big to manoeuvre around. No hole too narrow to fly through. The hoverbike twirls around its horizontal axis, one wing over the other, and Keith mirrors that; Shiro chuckles, then laughs out loud, his lungs filling up with wind. Sync. They're in sync.

His hands are steady as he approaches the cliff's edge. He's done so many more dangerous things, but out of all of them, this is still his favourite.

Shiro dives.

The hoverbike springs out into the vast nothingness. He plunges the handlebars sharply down, ground racing to meet him, adrenaline rising in his stomach at the sight of certain death, and in the exactly right moment he _knows_ what to do.

He pulls the bike up.

It's perfect.

He laughs breathlessly. There's nothing, nothing better than this.

Keith stays behind on the cliff's edge, and Shiro is proud of him; but the race continues, and Shiro would rather give away his licence than an advantage like this. He rides on, the momentum from the cliff changing him and all his thoughts into a speedy smudge, a braided comet tearing its way through the open desert.

 _I'm a pilot._

It's obvious, it's clear as a day, as the sunset sky over the horizon line.

Keith catches up to him on the finish line, as Shiro is staring into the distance, his mind filled with the wind and nothing else. He turns his head in warm greeting. He expects Keith to snap at him for cheating, but the kid's face is bright and gracious in excitement.

"Alright. You won this round, but I'll get you in the next race, old timer."

Shiro laughs. "I don't doubt it."

"How'd you do that dive, anyway?" Keith's eyes are shining, and Shiro supposes it's his own fault for showing that to a famous hotshot, but right now he couldn't care less. He chuckles.

"You liked that one, huh? It's all about timing." He makes a couple of steady gestures with his hands. "Pull up too soon, you won't have the momentum needed to create lift. Too late, there won't be enough lift to avoid the crash."

Keith's expression turns thoughtful. "You think I'm ready to try that?"

Shiro could laugh out loud. But he keeps his face straight, even if his eyes betray him. "What do you think?"

It's fascinating to observe Keith's decision-making process, clear as a day on his pale expressive face. Impatience, distaste, reconsideration, finally a choice. _Patience yields focus._ "Maybe I should be patient. And keep focusing on the basics first."

Shiro gives him a nod, his chest swelling with pride. "You're learning."

He is. He's learning so fast he'll take over the Comet in no time. He keeps every other thought at bay, just the wind and the race and the joy and the pride. And the sun over the desert, the open horizon that he'd seen so many times curving up into a perfect circle as he climbed up and up.

Between the desert and the Hokkaido peaks, how could he ever _not_ become a pilot?

"So… you grew up out here?" Shiro asks, even though he knows the answer. There's a little house westward from them that Keith will own for himself once he turns eighteen, an old Kogane ranch. Keith's head bobs in agreement all the same.

"Yep. Just me and my pop."

"He was a fireman, right?"

"Yeah. He was a real hero." There's no bitterness in Keith's voice, just slight exasperation, as if going and dying on his eight-year-old son was something he'd forgiven his father for, but would still bring that up in their petty arguments. So casual. So… normal. "Everyone told him not to run back into that building, but you couldn't tell _him_ anything."

Shiro takes those words for what they are, not looking under the surface. He gives Keith a warm smile. "Sounds like someone I know."

It's the right thing to say. Keith's face brightens up in the warm glow of the setting sun, and Shiro feels that warmth all the way to his heart.

Then – then the electro-stimulators go off.

He makes a small noise, clutching his wrist to his chest instinctively, and Keith notices right away. A cold shard lodges itself into the warm feeling in his chest.

"What are those?"

There's no point in lying. "These are just some electro-stimulators to keep my muscles loose." His tone is deliberately light, but Keith sees right through it.

"What's wrong with your muscles?"

An opening, a way to tell him – and perhaps he should –

\- but even if telling Adam has made it real, telling _Keith_ would put a timer on the kid's shoulders, take away the steady certainty he's been so painstakingly building. And Shiro can't let go of this, of him. Not yet.

"Ah, nothing. This is just what happens when you get to be an old timer." _The ripe old age of twenty five years, to be precise._

Worry clouds his dark eyes, the next question imminent. Shiro cuts it short. "Come on. We should get back to the base."

And he drives off, like _he_ is a sulky teenager. Keith catches up in a moment, but the thunderous expression on his face tells Shiro this is far from over.

-/-

And –

In the span of an hour, it's over.

"Pluto?" he says, disbelievingly, staring at Sam with wide eyes. The scientist nods cheerfully.

"Kerberos, to be precise. Furthest. Crew. Mission. _Ever._ "

" _But how-_ we've just come back!"

"Oh, I've known for a while. What do you think that extra month on the Moon was for? They wanted to make sure how well you did under pressure."

Shiro's head is spinning. " _Kerberos?_ "

"Well, we can't land on Pluto itself, so Kerberos is just a convenient stopover. The very edge of our Solar System, Shiro! Just think about it. It took ages to get that agreed with Flight Command."

His heart is beating unprofessionally fast. "That'd take us months just to get there."

"We'd be there and back again in less than half a year. Compared to the Calypso? Oh, we're so spoiled these days."

Shiro lets the thought sink in. _Months_ in space. Furthest exploration flight in the history of mankind. He's broken his share of records, but this – this is on entirely different level. If that works –

If that works, the Comet will rouse generational imagination like the Calypso. In colouring books for brainy six-year-olds, a picture of Pluto will be accompanied by her silver-white shape.

New era of space flight, spearheaded by Takashi "Shiro" Shirogane and his valiant white ship.

He reins in a deep, visceral shudder. "How many people?"

"Just a three-person mission. Me, you, and Matt. If you're in, of course."

Shiro opens his mouth to say an emphatic, unthinking _yes_ – and then the electro-stimulator jolts him. "Ouch. Sam, I- I don't know if that's a good idea for me. I don't know how fast my disease is going to progress. I could put you both in danger."

"Oh, Shiro." Sam's eyes soften as he regards him. "That's why we're doing that now."

"I don't follow."

"You deserve this, son. You've been nothing but an inspiration for every single person in this damn garrison, right from the day you swooped in to save that cadet from getting demoted. You've got the talent and the dedication, but more importantly, you've got the heart." Sam puts a warm hand on his shoulder. "Flight Command wanted me on the edge of the Solar System for a while, and probably wouldn't mind waiting longer. But as far as I'm concerned… I wouldn't entrust my son's life _and_ my own to any other pilot."

Shiro is floored. "You did this… so I could go? Before I can't fly?"

Sam's eyes sparkle with the same intelligent, compassionate joy he remembers from his first disciplinary meeting with Iverson. _It was a bump, but it reset the engine. A minor issue. Certainly not the cadet's fault._ "Think about it, Shiro. They can't go much farther than the edge of the system. You'd hold that record for a long bloody time."

Shiro laughs, surprise and delight mixed in one slightly choked voice. "Sam, this is mad."

"You said you wanted to do something great before you can't fly anymore. How's that for a crowning achievement?"

"It's…" _More than I could ever dream about._ "Incredible."

"So what'd you say, Shiro? One last hurrah, just to stick it to Becker's?"

"And then we focus to get Keith into space."

Sam's eyes sparkle. "I think that's a yes."

Shiro can't contain the joy that springs out of him, flowing out of a huge brilliant grin. "Yeah. That's definitely a yes."

-/-

"Absolutely _not._ "

"Mark, I-" Shiro tries to get a word in, but Iverson cuts him off.

"I put up with you for years, Shirogane. I signed your admission papers when you were a thirteen-year-old hotshot, and dealt with everything else ever since, but this is enough. I didn't put everything on the line to keep you in this garrison just to let you _go and die_ on goddamn Pluto."

"Kerberos."

"Your hands started shaking after a fucking month without meds."

Shiro doesn't let his exasperation show. "Because you changed my mission timing midway through. I'll know how much to take now. I'll take three times as much if that gives you peace of mind."

"And what if it's not enough? This is not just you, Shirogane. You'd be taking along two of the brightest damn scientists we've had for years. Losing all of you in one fell swoop-"

"-won't be a possibility," says Shiro calmly. "Waiting is no longer an option, Mark. Flight Command wants that mission before the next decade, and if you want yourself a good enough pilot, then it's going to be either me or Keith. And my time runs out by the end of next year."

Iverson looks apoplectic. "That's exactly my point!"

" _Until_ that moment, I can do this. But you have to let me."

"You're going to get yourself killed, Shirogane!"

Shiro's lips twitch in a sad smile. "One day, I'm sure. But not this time."

Iverson stands up from his desk. "No. I've enabled those self-destructive tendencies of yours for far too long. I hate to do this, Shirogane, but I'm gonna pull rank."

Shiro rises too. He meets his eyes with calm, collected decisiveness. "You can't."

"I'm your commander."

"And I'm a commander of the Kerberos Expedition."

He's met with deafening silence. Iverson's face goes violently purple. They stare each other down, the air heavy in between them, but Shiro knows he's won.

"This is not over, Shirogane. I'll get the admiral involved."

"I have to do this, Mark. Look me in the eye and tell me there's anybody else who can."

Iverson sits back down heavily. "Get out, Shirogane. We're all going to regret this. You, Sam, and sure as hell me. We'll have that conversation with the admiral next time."

Shiro's heart breaks just a little as he watches his staunchest, most steadfast supporter turn away. But then he gives a curt nod and walks off.

He's sacrificed more than this.

-/-

"You're going?"

"I'm going." Shiro looks his mother straight in the eye. Now that he knows the disease so personally, so intimately, he can see the minute spots of weakness on her face. Shirogane Shizuka looks as if the dystrophy has already caught her lungs, as if she can't catch a breath for a split second.

Then she takes hold of herself. "Did you pass the physicals?"

"I did. They all know, but the disease isn't going to affect the mission."

"Takashi." His mother's eyes are shining, hard, bright with unspilled tears. " _Don't die._ "

Shiro nods. He is not his grandfather.

He's better.

-/-

"There's a curse on this family. And it's not the disease."

"Dad-"

"You're so valiant, son. I wish you could see yourself the way people around you see you. You burn brighter than the sun." His father's hair is grey now, bright patches of white over his forehead. His voice is full of pain. "And you don't stop. Is there nothing to hold you back? Nothing at all?"

Shiro's throat constricts with unspoken emotion. "I- I'll come back. I'm not leaving forever, dad."

"Not this time, maybe. But one day you will. And then you'll break all of our hearts."

He grits his teeth. "I can't let go of this. It's the furthest mission ever attempted. And I'm the only one who can _do this._ "

"Takashi." His father turns away from him, stares out from the terrace at the jagged peaks of Hokkaido. It's just a two-day visit. But Shiro had to see this, had to make sure that the dream in those mountains is still there, that the piece of space rubble left at the feet of the statue is still firmly planted in the earth. "There's nothing I can say that will stop you."

"No. It's not- I'll come back, dad."

Shirogane Takeo shakes his head helplessly, and Shiro can feel the sadness radiating from him like a physical wave of cold.

"And there's nothing I can say that will make you understand. You are your mother's son, after all."

Shiro doesn't answer. He squeezes his steady hands into fists so tight that the silver engagement ring leaves a mark inside his palm.

-/-

"When were you going to tell me?"

Shiro flinches. He's heard that words too many times. But it's not Adam this time.

"Hey, Keith."

He walks off the ladder, leaving the Comet's engine oil stains be for the moment. Keith's angry, approaching with fast, nervous strides, and Shiro can see the obvious lines of fury and betrayal on his white face. "So, what is it? Are you sick or something?"

"I'm not sure I follow-"

"I was outside your office. I overheard you and Commander Holt talking with Admiral Sanda." Keith's face is trembling, his voice coming up faster and louder with every single word. "Tell me the truth, tell me what's wrong! I'm not a little kid, I can handle it!"

Shiro hesitates –

Keith is the same age as himself when he found out.

He sighs. There's nothing to hide anymore.

"I have a disease. And it's getting worse. I'll only be able to maintain my peak condition for a couple more years. After that..."

Keith's eyes are wide with shock, and Shiro can't handle it. He turns back to the Comet. "The garrison doesn't want me up there. Neither does Adam."

"So… what are you gonna do?"

"I'm going on the mission." Shiro's jaw sets decisively. "Keith, there's something more I need you to hear."

The kid walks up to him. And when he speaks, for once his voice is steady, the innate fire quelled to an ember. "Are you… dying?"

"What? No. Of course not!" He can only see the morbid tension in Keith's entire frame only _after_ it disappears. "I said I'm never giving up on you. _Dying_ counts as giving up."

Keith's lips curl up in a tiny relieved smile. "You bet."

"Keith, you always kept asking why. This is why." Shiro raises his left wrist, the electro-stimulator hugging his skin tightly. "In a few years I will no longer be able to fly, and the Comet needs a pilot. I want you to take over once I'm done."

"But you're not done, you're- how old are you, anyway? You can be my co-pilot! You can't just stop flying, can you?" Keith's eyes drill into him. "Can you?"

"I don't know. But I can tell you this." And Shiro knows there will be nothing but understanding on the other side of those dark fiery eyes, his heir, his timeline unbroken. "As long as I can fly, I will. And once I can't, you will fly for me."

Keith is stunned.

Then, after a lifetime, he gives one sharp nod. "I'll _never_ let you down."

A funny turn of phrase, thinks Shiro, his heart doing something funny in his chest. Keith won't let him down. He'll keep him in the air, in flight, over the open circle of horizon, and he'll never come down.

-/-

There's just one last conversation he has to have.

The flat is quiet as ever. Black-and-white, tidy and pristine, with a clean fresh smell. The orange couch, matching bar stools at the table, a long line of kitchen cabinets. Shiro knows this place so well he could draw the lines of it with his eyes closed. All his dreams start here.

All his nightmares, too. And, between one awakening and the other, everything else.

Adam's working at the table. A cup of coffee sits dangerously close to a holo. Shiro clears his throat as he walks in, and Adam murmurs a greeting, but otherwise nothing breaks the calm, focused silence of the flat.

"Do you have a moment?"

"No. What is it?"

Shiro takes a deep breath. "I love you."

Adam looks up. "Oh."

"And I know you asked me not to go to space anymore. But there's something I have to do for myself."

Adam's face is fixed in a blank expression. "Right."

"There's a mission I was asked to go on. Edges of the Solar System, Pluto's moon Kerberos. This is the last time I…" Shiro trails off. "You know already."

"Yeah."

"And you wouldn't tell me."

"Not until you decided to bring it up. And it only took a month this time. You're getting better at this, Shiro." His lips curl just a fraction of an inch. "I guess I'm getting better, too."

"Adam, I can't live without flying."

"I know. I know you can't."

Shiro steps closer, trying to shake off the still mask on Adam's face. But it doesn't move. "Are you mad at me?"

"No, Shiro. This is just who you are."

A feeling of dread creeps over him, cold and unfamiliar. "I'd like it better if you were."

Adam closes his eyes for a second. "There's only so much time a person can be mad."

"I… Adam, this is my last mission. My time runs out after that. We can focus on teaching, get married. You'd be going to space on your own. You'll understand."

"Shiro." Adam opens his eyes again and looks at him, his eyes steady. "If you go, this is over."

Shiro takes a step back.

The ceiling is not crashing on his head, the walls are not tearing down, the floor is not caving under him, the room continues existing in the exact same way as it did before.

It's just him.

"Adam-"

"No. I can't do this anymore. I can't. No amount of love can fix this."

And, just like that, he's thrown back in front of the hulking asteroid. His choice is made, his decision is final, he's chosen a path, and now the other one closes. It's too late. It's just too late.

"Adam, this would be the last time."

"You know that's not true." Adam blinks; his eyes are dry, but Shiro can see a sliver of emotion there, and it breathes a shadow of hope into his lungs.

"I have to give up flying anyway. It's not a promise, Adam, it's a fact."

"And then what? You expect me to believe you'll just let go? The grand astronaut Takashi Shirogane, who boldly went where no-one had before? _You_ will let go _?_ "

"I'll have to."

"No, you won't. You'll find a way to keep doing it, you always do." Adam's face is still impassive, but his knuckles whiten on the coffee cup. "Through treatment, or re-qualifying, or Keith. You'll run yourself into the ground, but you'll never give up on this."

Desperation rises in his stomach, the pitch-black pit of despair. "I will. I know I have no right to tell you that, but-"

"But what, Shiro? I've been here all along. I've _seen_ you. I've watched this time and time again. You don't stop, and you never have, not for anything in the world." His mouth quivers. "And definitely not for me."

Shiro comes closer until he's over him, watching Adam clench his fingers on the cup so hard that the line of coffee inside trembles. The engagement ring is still on his hand. "We don't have to do this. I'll- everything changes after this mission. You're the reason I come back to Earth, Adam, my life revolves around you. There's nothing more important than you."

Adam shudders. Shiro reaches out, but his hand stills halfway through the move, drops next to Adam's at the table top.

He won't do this through manipulation. He will face this. He'll be honest.

"I… the disease has been everything. Ever since I was sworn in, I knew I couldn't stop the clock. It's not stopping now, either. But once the time runs out, Adam… I'll have a completely different life. I can't do it without you. I don't want to."

"You wanna prove it?" Adam looks up to him, and the mask of composure on his face quivers. "Don't go. They can send Keith in a couple of years, when he's good enough. You don't _have to_ go."

Shiro balls his fists. "I need to do this. Last time. I promise. But I need to."

"Why?" There's deadly tension in that syllable, as if Adam was keeping together on his last breath. And then – then his face shatters, breaks, and Shiro's breath catches in his throat at the raw despair. "There's nothing else for you to prove! You've broken every record there was to break! Youngest, fastest, bravest, _greatest,_ when is it enough?! _Will there ever be enough?!_ "

"Adam-"

"Maybe you're right. Maybe your life _does_ revolve around me. But oh, Shiro, Shiro, you know what that means?!" Adam's voice falters in a devastating hurt. "It means I'm stuck! I watch you go in those same circles, again and again and again, and I _know_ nothing changes, because I know _you,_ and I love the way you come back to me, and that I still get to have you in those short moments when you're actually here on the ground, and _I just love you without a reason,_ but I'm still stuck!"

He cuts himself off, chest heaving. Shiro's knees feel weak.

"I- I need to go on. I need to find my own fucking orbit."

Shiro's whisper is no more than a breath. "I wanted to be on it."

"I want you to. So badly I'm- I'm-" Adam hides his face in palms. "I can't look at you. I can't touch you. Or this happens again, _and again, and again, and again, and I just can't-_ please, Shiro, please, if you go, then you just fucking _go._ "

Shiro forces himself to look.

To see exactly what he's done.

 _You undo me._

His lips form around a promise, but then he drops it. There's nothing he can do to fix it. The decision has been made. He's chosen a course. And if the course has brought him to his destruction, only to crash and burn –

Then there's no way but through.

"I love you," he says quietly, and Adam's entire body quivers, as if Shiro hit him.

"I love you too. I'll never stop. I'll never meet anyone like you. But this is not good, or healthy, or right. And I can't hide this anymore."

He stands up, the holo in his trembling hands. "When's the launch?"

Shiro understands what he's asking about only after a long silent moment. He opens his mute lips as if he were forcing the words out from between prison bars. "First of October."

Adam nods.

Shiro wants to reach out, wants to close the space between them with just a few steps, press Adam's entire body against his own, kiss away the wet trail on his cheeks, feel the tension drain away from his clenched shoulders, body and soul melting into a warm puddle of relief – and he could, he knows he could, Adam wouldn't stop him, there would be no resistance. And Shiro's tempted so much he can almost taste the salt of Adam's tears on his lips –

Adam wouldn't stop him this time.

And maybe the next.

But with the bitterness rising, the end would be in sight.

 _You can't toy with people, Takashi._ He never had. Nothing he's ever done was anything other than sincere.

"I don't want us to end like this, Adam. Or at all."

Adam's lips tremble. "Then you have four months to change your fucking mind."

"I-"

"I'll stay in the barracks. Keep the flat, Shiro. I was only ever happy here because of you."

Then he goes, unfinished cup of coffee left on the table, and he doesn't slam the door behind him. He closes it. But Shiro feels the tremor of it nevertheless, a deafening noise of thunder that threatens to shatter all of him, tear out his failing, sick flesh, until what's left of him collapses to the ground in a white rattling pile of bones.

He's alone.

He's _alone._

-/-

Keith doesn't understand. But he's trying to be helpful anyway. He gets so upset at his inability to be comforting that Shiro ends up consoling _him._

Sam does understand. He offers to take him off the mission. But Shiro's gone too far, antagonised too many, sacrificed too much to give up now.

His parents offer conflicting advice. Shiro listens, and then does neither of the things suggested.

There's a hole in his life, at the very junction, and it spreads down to unravel everything else.

-/-

He can't bring himself to take the coffee cup off the table.

-/-

On the day of the launch, when the Comet is already prepared for the flight, there are a few people to say goodbye to him. Keith, first, eyes bright with excitement, only darkening for a second when the teenaged tells him _dying_ still counts as _giving up._ His mother, then, and it's first time he sees her with a cane. A brief, tight hug, and her memory hanging in between them: this is the same runway that saw the start of Matsuoka Taro, proud and Venus-bound.

His father, his hair white, his eyes just as bright as Keith's, but with tears. He gives his blessing nevertheless.

And then, finally, when he already loses hope and turns back, there's one more silhouette on the empty runway. His heart rises to his throat and lodges itself there, a small, shrivelled walnut-sized knot of nerves.

"Adam."

"Shiro."

He's paler than he ever remembers him being. The wind swishes in his ears.

"Congratulations on your licence."

Adam flashes a weak, dry smile. "Six years later, but I finally caught up to you."

"I moved all my things to my mother's. Flat is yours."

"You never listen to what I tell you, huh?"

"It… didn't feel right."

Adam hangs his head low. "I moved to Chris'."

Shiro looks at him, and for all the air and wind on the vast empty runway, there isn't enough room to breathe.

"We're just flatmates. For now. And he'll never be you. But he knows that."

Shiro moves his lips with effort. _Focus._ "I'm happy for you."

"Oh, bullshit."

They stare at each other, an arm's length away, and Shiro knows that if his own heart weren't already so shrunken, so hopelessly withered, it would break all over again. He swallows hard.

"Are _you_ happier like this?"

Adam is mute for a long moment.

"No," he says, finally, voice tight. "It's a fucking nightmare so far. But I think I will be, in the long run."

Shiro nods. Something pricks at his eyes. Desert dust. He's not crying.

"That's good."

"Shiro… I've gone to counselling. There's one last thing for me to do." Adam opens his hand, and through his rapidly watering eyes Shiro can see a round silver shape. "She said that I need to… and those are her exact words… take out the trash."

Shiro chuckles, and Adam does too. Then they start laughing out loud.

It _is_ funny. It's also heartbreaking. But he can't stop himself from peals of laughter, and even he could, he wouldn't, because there's something worse waiting at the edge of it. "It's taking itself out, I think."

Adam drops the ring on his white astronaut glove. "Just… take it back to the stars. It was never really mine."

"Yes, it was."

Adam drops his gaze. He doesn't argue.

Shiro is light-headed from the tension and the laughter. He steps closer before he's realising it. "Adam…"

Adam shakes his head. "No, Shiro. You've made your choice, and I've made mine."

Shiro steps back. And then he looks at the bulk of the Comet behind him, his valiant white ship to take him away from this cursed place. Away from the pain and the heartbreak. Away from the disease, the ticking clock, and the consequences, further away than any man has ever gone before.

"Goodbye, Shiro. You fucking idiot. I still love you. Come back, or I'm stuck teaching Keith for the next six years."

"I love you too."

Adam wordlessly nods and walks away.

The Earth turns under his feet. _Patience yields focus._ In time, this will be just another memory. The space is calling him, the wind blowing away the wet trails on his cheeks, whispering of things to come.

Somewhere, on the edges of the Solar System, the moon of Pluto awaits his arrival. Kerberos, Cerberus, the three-headed gatekeeper to a dimension unknown to humans. Somewhere, even further, a new frontier beckons, the call of the wind louder and louder in his ears, of patience and focus and faith and resilience; a promise of hardship and pain and payoff. Somewhere, he knows that in his bones, a decision to make will cost him greater than even this, and yet he'll make it still; the self-sacrifice will border on self-destruction, but Shiro knows how to do it, he's always known. Somewhere, the jagged mountain peaks hide a castle. Somewhere, somewhere, the voice of the wind waits for him to find and claim it.

Shiro lays a hand on the Comet's shining white nose. Then he touches his forehead to hers.

"You and I, old girl," he whispers, and the wind swirls around him.

-/-

-/-

-/-

 _Thank you so much for sticking around for this story. As much as it is Shiro's origin story, it has also been my love letter to him, as well as everything he came to mean to me. If you enjoyed it, or if you feel the same way about the good ol' Dreamboat Shirogane, let me know in the comments below – I would absolutely love to hear from you!_

 _Here's something you might want to know if you've enjoyed this fic: the White Paladin as a story is finished, but I'm still thinking about whether or not this warrants an epilogue/sequel. Let me know if you'd read it, and if you wanna make sure you won't miss it, subscribe/bookmark this story or the user. (The thing I'm thinking about the most is just one-chapter epilogue with Adam's reaction to the Kerberos crash.)_

 _As a final comment: if you ever want to go back to this fic again, you might find it interesting that I went to the Voltron School of Foreshadowing, and there are copious amounts of stuff in the earlier chapters that hint at the entire story. I challenge you to hunt them all down. And yep, that's a dare. Thank you so much for tagging along with Shiro and Adam, I'll see you guys in the comments!_

 _(Throughout his life Shiro hears the voice of wind that helps him find himself at crucial points. Do you know now, or can you guess, what/who that is?)_


End file.
